News, Trust, and "Truthiness"

While reading my classmates’ blogs, most of which agreed that satirical news are equally as reliable as legitimate news, I noticed a strong faulty trend that even I fell for when writing last week’s post – there was a common misunderstanding of the definition of “reliability”.

A majority of the class agreed that they like satirical news reporting because it is humorous in how it emphasizes the corruption and sometimes plain bigotry of power holders in our society (corporate companies, politicians, governments, etc), which gives its audience entertainment and awareness at the same time. However, this does not necessarily identify the source as reliable; in fact, it may very well play the opposite role.

Karandeep Dhillon backs up my point by stating that “…[satirical news shows] raise points regarding current situations which the general audience watches and is interpolated to think in the same way. The use of satire can create biases in audiences…” (http://jattinc.wordpress.com/2013/11/21/80/). For the sake of the entertainment business, the humour these shows use has to be somewhat controversial for an audience to be attracted to it. However, controversial information can cause for a bias in opinion, especially for an impressionable audience.

This can cause a problem because, as Isaac Cowan puts it, “When you ask most teenagers or people in their early 20s, do they prefer their news presented in a truthful and funny way or truthful but boring and a slightly biased way? Arguably speaking, most would say the first option…” (http://isaacc56.wordpress.com/2013/11/21/is-the-fake-news-the-real-news-2/). Beneficially, these shows interest a younger audience, which gets that demographic more interested in international issues, and ultimately, more active in working towards a cause they believe in. However, because youth are so impressionable, feeding them information that so strongly supports one ideology can bias their overall opinion.

That being said, satirical news shows should not be completely eliminated from the public sphere – rather, just independent from legitimate news sources. While their purpose is debatable, they do serve a good cause, as Jenny Tran proves in her blog post: “Even though some people do not like satirical news reporting such as The Daily Show and The Rick Mercer Report, it starts debates. This makes people see other people’s point of views…” (http://jt11mb.blogspot.ca/2013/11/is-fake-news-real-news.html). With so much heated debate in our society between political parties and their supporters, it is important to look at a situation from both perspectives to be able to properly present a well-informed, unbiased opinion.

Satirical news shows benefit our society in many other ways. As I discussed in my last blog post, the hosts of these shows often live off of humourously criticizing politicians and/or corporate companies and their faults. However, what some people see as faults, others can see as a move in the right direction, meaning that these hosts are presenting their own biased opinion. The benefit is that it raises awareness to a large audience; by making the bold statements that they do, they put a situation in a new perspective for people to rethink where they stand on said issue. This does not play the full role of a news sources, though, which is why I cannot define satirical news as reliable, but rather as beneficial.