A specific genre that has always fascinated me is news satire. News satire has been around for centuries. It can be found in print, such as the French weekly magazine Charlie Hebdo; on television, in programs like Saturday Night Live's Weekend Update and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart; and in more recent times, it can be found online with websites like The Onion. News satire often talks about people, politics, and other current events that are relevant to the times. I feel that the goal of news satire is to point out and criticize the hypocrisy, irony, or general ridiculousness of the everyday happenings of the world. Though it is often supposed to be “fake news”, it has actually become a very informative and educational source for many people, especially the younger generation. Why is this so? Because it is much more interesting to listen to Stephen Colbert tell you about the latest thing Congress has done in a comedic and insightful manner, than it is to watch C-SPAN. Though some may worry that so many people are getting their information from parody journalism, I actually think it is beneficial. I myself actually began watching The Daily Show with Jon Stewart when I was about 12 or 13 years old. Of course I did not understand some of what he was talking about when it came to the economy and politics, but the attention-grabbing manner in which he presented definitely made me want to find out more. If it can get a young teenager to be interested in the news, then I think that is a success.
Politicians are often the butt of many a joke made by satirical news sources. Though there are of course many politicians who are genuine and do a lot of good, I think people are okay with mocking and satirizing those who are sometimes known to be shady, greedy, or make poor decisions that end up negatively impacting their constituents. Satirical news often takes a real quote from a politician (usually an absurd or foolish one) and either simply poke fun at it or analyze it in a way that will make the audience laugh.
I think that two vital rhetorical elements of news satire are sarcasm and deadpan humor. Since news satire is meant to parody actual journalism, the more straight-faced one is while delivering a punchline, the funnier it is for the audience. When reading articles posted on The Onion, I have to constantly remind myself that it is fictional, because the writers write in such a way that sounds so factual, yet when you take a second look, the text is saturated with subtle (and sometimes not-so-subtle) humor and sarcasm.
In addition to this, profanity also plays an important role. Not only does it allow the audience or reader to discriminate news satire from real news, but it also gives off a sense of a lack of censorship, which many audiences are attracted to; they are enticed by the feeling that they are witnessing something raw and non-conformist.
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| (Photo from TheOnion.com) |
I like the topic that you chose, it's different but something a lot of people are familiar with. I also like that you provided examples of the kind of news satires that are common, not only from our time but from a little back in the day too. This is all about profane and inappropriate humor based on factual things going on in the world around us and I think that would keep whoever read this post interested. You definitely explained the conventions of the genre well, and made it easy to understand.
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