Ever since I started thinking of bloggers as journalists and of the Daily Show as a news broadcast, my idea of the media has completely opened up. My latest interest is The Onion. The newspaper calls itself "America's Finest News Source" and they make fun of almost any topic - lately there have been frequent articles parodying the election and the economy.
While their articles are clearly satire, they are usually based on an element of truth, and they portray the truth in ways you would never see on the news. Can anything be gained from this type of comedy? Do they ever give the public truth that they couldn't find on the evening news?
2 comments:
Interesting question. I think that these shows are funny and there are some points of view that normally wouldn't be shown in the news, but I don't know if I considering them to in the same line as news. I don't think that they bring a whole lot to the news scene and are more pure entertainment.
Personally, I think that they present a more fair view of the situation, especially with the increasing bias in the mainstream media (for left and for right). The mainstream media no longer treats each story fairly due to bias from each political side of the spectrum (and sometimes purely for profit reasons too.) Hence, a media source that is "no respecter of persons," and indeed makes fun of all stories equally, actually provides fairer coverage than the mainstream. The American people know the difference, let them sort it out. They don't need someone to interpret the news stories for them like the mainstream does.
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