Should the news, CBS, FOX, NBC, CNN, etc. present the news more like the way the Daily Show present the news. It seems to me the seriousness and the gravity of the news turns people off from it and contributes to a bleak outlook on the state of humanity. Why is the news serious? Isn’t it just one person’s perspective that a story is a serious one? Couldn’t another find that same story to be amusing?
Would the world, the people of the world, be better off, happier and more considerate of others, if it were presented to them in a more lightbeat and imaginitive way? Why is someone getting stabbed serious? Isn’t it funny too? What happens when the stories are presented differently on a mass scale?
I don’t know. I don’t watch FOX. For sake of argument, say FOX News and the Daily Show present the news in the same way. What if all outlets presented news in this way? How would that effect the population?
In general, I think the news sucks. It’s formulaic and unimaginitive. I think this may contribute to apathy and a poor world view for those who watch. I would like to think if people were presented information differently their opinions of the world would be less apathetic and would cause them to feel more empowered.
I’d argue that if something has an affect on your life then it is interesting/entertaining. The news is presented in a way such that the viewer has no sense of connection between what is happening in the world and their own lives. The Daily show humanizes events making them relatable to people allowing them to see connections between people in the news and themselves.
I think it’s that exact attitude that causes the problem. As though, the news is of dire importance. It’s like the boy who cried wolf. The news presents itself as though watching it is important and if one were not to pay attention and take interest the sky would fall, but yet, the viewer ignores and the sky does not fall, thus, making the news totally uncredible and irrelevant.
I wouldn’t watch the news if it was entertaining. You know why? Because I don’t really find it funny when people get stabbed, and I don’t particularly care about listening to drunk driving.
Making the news entertaining would have a horrible effect in my opinion. If you made the news entertaining and funny, it would standardize and legitamatize the issue. It would make assassinations and people dying in general funny. That would numb people to the seriousness of the situation at hand.
The reason the Daily Show is good is that it is a comedy show, not a news broadcast. News broadcasts are important and necessary because they are designed to get the information across to the public. It is supposed to be serious, because life is serious. When most of television programming is entertainment, why would you feel the need to make one of the only serious, informative programs entertaining?
Depends on culture, individual, intelligence, type of news, etc.
Maybe.
Being entertained feels good.
Requires a utilitarian calculus of the pros and cons of attachment as opposed to detachment of one to the world.
I think everyone should be happy all the time, and yet still make correct choices on behaviors that are detrimental to themselves and to society.
The government should install signs reading “The sky is now falling” in everyones houses right above the TV that blinks and makes a loud siren noise. The sign would turn on whenever the news is on and everyone in the house would run around frantically screaming.
Imagine if things in life were informative and entertaining maybe people might actually be tricked into learning something.
Doubtful, I think there are ingrown human proclivities which can determine what is funny from what isn’t even if its portrayed in a funny way.
So you concur with what I said above with reference to human proclivities, but I think I would enjoy the news more if it were entertaining and informative, which it usually isn’t either of them.
Sometimes life isn’t serious. Most people get a sense of satisfaction and cheer when the bad guy gets killed in a movie. Why is that? Isn’t that someone getting stabbed, which you say is not funny? Why don’t we mourn and cry when the bad guys die? If someone is killed and it makes it on the news how do you know that person isn’t a bad person like the person you cheered for the death of the night before? It’s a matter of perspective. The news will always present to you the perspective that if someone dies it is sad, but that is not human nature. Human nature does not mourn death always. Sometimes people laugh right in the face of death (This is what the news would call ‘brave’).
The news is biased. They were biased against the tobacco companies. They were biased against Scott Peterson. They were biased in their support of the president after 9/11. I do not fault them for that. We’re all biased. To be human, is to be biased. The news is just one take on what is important and how one should feel about events. My problem is that they all give the same interpretation of events and all suggest we feel the same way about that event and they all report the same exact events. One channel doesn’t support the tobacco company, while the other opposes them. They all hate the tobacco companies. In a way, FOX news has it right. They’re fair and balanced - from within their own biases. The illusion that the other channels give is that they’re not biased and the illusion is enhanced by them all saying and doing the same exact thing and margianilizing alleged radical organizations like FOX, Al Jazeera, etc, as being biased, since they don’t tell the story the same way they do.
I’m not saying the news should always be presented as a joke. What makes the daily show good is that within the jokes truth is revealed through absurdity, which is denied in a media, which refuses to ever acknowledge that what it says may be irrelevant or unimportant, since if what they say is irrelvant they themselves are irrelevant.
Also, the Daily show isn’t comedy all the time. John Stewart in between jokes reveals his true feelings on subjects. On the day of 9/11 he refused to tell jokes at all, which underlined the gravity and seriousness in way that the straight news could never do because they are the ones who cry wolf.
The Daily Show is a piece of not particularly original, not particularly funny satire. It directly contributes to apathy by presenting the leaders not as the conspiratorial, lying, corrupt bastards that they are, but as a subject of ridicule and amusement.
This is actually worse than Fox News’s one-dimensional tabloidising of every story they broadcast. Here’s a suggestion that obviously didn’t occur to you - should we destroy the entertainment culture in favour of actual using TV to teach things to people, rather than expecting the news to provide them will all the relevant information?
Well, that’s a thought, but how would you implement television that only teaches, how do you decide what gets taught? How many stations are there? Give me an example.
Write strongly education but well-made productions yourself, either make them yourself and sell them to TV networks, or write them and try to get them made by TV networks.
Exploit the avenues that already exist and set a good example yourself.
Nah, I mean how do you forsee television that only teaches. Give me an example of the programs that would be on this version of television, also are you saying that the expectations placed on the news are unfare in that they’re expected to teach people all the relevant information that they need?
Well, most political documentary series, particularly Panorama and Dispatches (both British), are far more educational and informative than the news broadcasts.
And no, I don’t think the expectations placed on the news are unfair, as such. More ‘unrealistic’.
Aren’t they the subject of ridicule and amusement because they’re lying conspiratorial bastards? Isn’t the daily show setting an example for how not to be? They’re saying you act like this, and we treat you like that. Isn’t that what you get out of a documentary that exposes one’s conspiratorial ways and doesn’t it do it more quickly and convienently for the public to manage?