Digital News: Satirical News

SATIRICAL NEWS

As our digital news brand is all about taking a look at the funnier side of the news, I thought it'd be a good idea to look at satirical news. For a very long time, people have enjoyed making jokes about the news, especially all the late night television hosts. But in recent years, television shows have emerged that are purely dedicated to taking the mick out of the news, whilst still informing their audience. They make the news more interesting and easier to take in. They are presented like actual news programs, with a smartly dressed presenter behind a desk, and they produce professional news reports with all the correct information, they just overlay all that with a ridiculous amount of jokes and wisecracks. Here are a two examples from the UK and the US:

THE LAST LEG (UK, 2012-present)

Best summed up by the host Adam Hills, The Last Leg is "three guys with four legs talking about the week". The show originally started during the 2012 paralympics and was intended to be a daily show that took an alternative look at the days events. The show was so successful that Channel 4 decided to commision a full series, that looked at the weeks news. The show has since become incredibly popular in UK, and when ever it's on TV, it's pretty much almost trending number one on Twitter. The show likes to talk about serious stories and tell their audience all the information they need to know, however they do try to look at the funny side of everything. There are of course times when a story is so distressing, there is no funny side, and even still they keep the audience interested with the way they tell the story. The presenters are comedians, not journalists, and this helps the audience connect with the stories they feature. They also have a feature called #isitokay which allows the audience to get involved and suggest things on Twitter that they think the guys should talk about on the show. Overall it is a very good example of UK satirical news at its best.

LAST WEEK TONIGHT (US, 2014-present)

Last Week Tonight is a US late night satirical news program. It is hosted by John Oliver who is a British comedian who found fame in the US on The Daily Show, another popular satirical news program. As the show is featured on a cable channel, it has free reign to do pretty much anything it wants, in fact the show has become famous for some of the ridiculous things it has done, like setting up it's own church, and giving away the biggest amount of money in television history. Like The Last Leg, this show looks at the funny side of the news, even when investigating serious stories. Each week the show will do an investigative piece into something that may even be featured in the main news. These reports they do are very informative and often trigger a response from people high up in the US Government. I love that the show brings these stories to a new audience, and highlights the things it thinks the news should be talking about. And it does all this whilst still entertaining and informing its audience. Many segments from the show have gone viral, and John has become known for his ability to completely destroy somebody on his show, especially Donald Trump, and because the show is on HBO, he can say whatever he likes. The show also ends up on international news regularly because of its content, especially last year when John Oliver travelled to Russia to interview Edward Snowden. So it is clear that although the show is a satirical news program, it does have a heavy influence in the news sector, and is taken very seriously by its audiences. This is an example of a show that has had an incredible amount of success worldwide, even though it is basically a comedy news program.

From this I think it's safe to say that even good satirical news is often taken seriously and still often has to look at serious news, and that is why even our brand will still look at serious news, because audiences still want some of the serious stuff, not everything has a funny side.

Images:

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