For almost every political opinion possessed in America there’s a corresponding television station to represent it. Fox News, MSNBC, CNN, and several others compose the main news base for both American and Global politics and events, but each station presents information in a different light. One television channel that is not regularly recognized as a reliable source of general news is Comedy Central, home of both the Daily Show and the Colbert Report: anchored news programs composed of both satire and observational comedy. Both Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, the two show’s anchors, have become prominent within the news community, and have become some of the best sources for reliable information by utilizing comedy to see the pros and cons of what’s happening within the world.
The Daily Show was the longest running program on Comedy Central, being on air from 1996-2015 with two different hosts: Craig Kilborn and Jon Stewart. Since the creation of the show it stood as a "mockumentary" style program, imitating the style of regular nightly news programs. Jon Stewart unfortunately resigned as host, a position he held for 15 years, but over that decade and a half he continued to develop a corresponding news team composed of up-and-coming comedians and improvisational performers. One of Stewart’s early correspondents was Stephen Colbert, who moved on to develop his own show, the Colbert Report, in 2005. Although the Colbert Report is presented in the same format as the Daily Show, Colbert performs within a satirical role of a radical conservative, exaggerating and mocking certain political decisions made within the political realm. Colbert’s performance and sense of humor is much more dramatic and brash than Stewart’s, but the two balance each other out as brother news programs.
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Both Stewart and Colbert are more notably recognized for their comedic skills, (the two having won countless Primetime Emmy Awards each), than for their abilities to deliver the cold, hard facts. But, as shown by thinkprogress.org, data collected proves that viewers of the Daily Show and the Colbert Report are more knowledgeable than viewers of any other news program. The Pew Research Center comprised this study by having people identify certain world leaders, facts of America’s involvement in current wars, and other relevant news knowledge, along with which news source they most strongly trust. The Daily Show/Colbert Report’s audience ranked 54 percent of answering correct news knowledge, whereas the audience of CNN ranked 41 percent, and FOX News with 35 percent. This may come as a shock for many, but it’s actually directly correlated with the comedic performances of the two anchors, and what makes them appear to be so unreliable in the first place.
Humor and the mind is a complex study, but through various experiments using MRI and fMRI technology, scientists have found that the processing of a joke within our minds takes a lot of work throughout all different areas. Certain joke language, (i.e. “knock-knock”) can immediately trigger our Broca’s area, or language processing system, causing our brain to be prepared to laugh. As our mind is processing the language we hear and connecting it to our emotional processing center, the amygdala, and then signaling our body to react by physically laughing, we are processing all the information we are hearing at a much deeper level. Therefore, when serious news is mixed with a joke, it’s naturally much easier to be understood, and remembered by the listener.
As our nation continues to evolve by achieving great prosperity, and occasionally delving into chaos, it’s always important to keep track of the facts, and to understand how you individually relate to society as a whole. But to truly delve into how our world is operating, it’s necessary to take in every statistic along with some slapstick.
