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Summary: Real News Vs. Satire Research Paper

Real News Versus Satire News Conceive of a time of an active shooter situation was occurring somewhere around the USA an instead of CNN’s Anderson Cooper report the news, a comedian such as Jon Stewart is the newscaster. Most likely viewers would shake their heads and change the TV channel to another news channel. An article by student Christopher Moore called “Information Plus Satire: Why The Daily Show and The Colbert are Good Sources of News for Young People” in the anthology Writing Arguments a Rhetoric with Readings by John d. Ramage, Jon c.

Bean, and June Johnson; Moore writes about why satire news like The Colbert Report and The Daily Show good sources of news for young people This is not true, major news channels like CNN, FOX News Channel and MSNBC are good sources of news for young people. Moore believes satire news is a good source for college students. He achieves this by including his ideas on the subject. The content of the shows provides up-to-date news stories and helps viewers make connections to the news and their surroundings, by convincing the viewers that all news has an angle of vision.

Ideas such one news topic instead of forcing on multiple topics during the 22-minute program. This helps the viewer focus on the news subject better. This is because the most important news is shown and not the side news. Moore writes that a satire, helps the audience read the news rhetorically; this causes the viewers to be skeptical of the news. At the conclusion of the article he writes how the viewing audience will have a healthy skepticism about the objective truthfulness of the news.

This all concludes satire news makes it Varga 2 easier for the viewer to see the bias and angle of vision, thus the iewers think at a critical level. (Moore, 297-300) This idea that Christopher Moore composes about is completely mistaken. News is an important part of today’s society and he downplays it as an agenda. Everything the Moore writes about seem like it was written to make it seem more creditable than it is. In the article, he includes a quote by the conservative Fox News commentator Bill O’Reilly “a bunch of stone[sic] slackers” who sit at home unengaged in politics and watching The Daily Show and The Colbert Report Yeah, right. But I wonder, where did he get this information? ” (qtd.

In 300) After reading this, how anyone is supposed to believe what Moore wrote about is honorable. In the article Moore pens that, news satire programs like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report is always updated and gives an example, why it is a creditable news source. “Since The Daily Show and The Colbert Report both air every weekday except Friday, they constantly present viewers with up-to-date news. ” (298) CNN and other major news channels are Monday through Friday and are more creditable in nature as they are real news programs and are even more up-to date as they live on air.

People can dispute The Daily Show but likely not CNN. A good example of this is, the 2016 presidential election coverage. CNN is a good source to get all the election coverage a person might need as it airs coverage throughout the day. In the article Moore writes,” Whereas network news broadcasts tend to move quickly toward sports, weather, humanitarian “feel good” stories or, “breaking news” … Stewart and Colbert keep their satirical focus on major events with social or political significance. ” (298) Ok, Moore explains the network news like it is a local news.

CNN, FOX News Channel and MSNBC most of the time explain the same topic throughout the day, like the 2016 presidential election coverage. This idea is basically, how Varga3 Moore explains how satire news only cover major news only. It can be true that network news cover everything but this is expected for the news networks or how else viewers would know what is happening around the world. One of Moore’s points on why satire news is good is, “The satire teaches audiences how to “read” the news rhetorically. Unlike conventional news sources, … ncouraging viewers to be skeptical of the news. ” (298) He states how the news has an agenda and Stephen Colbert teach viewers to spot the agenda. An example of this is,” in an interview with Julian Assange … Colbert told his audience that he would show two versions of the interview: one of the unaltered footage and one that deliberately edited the footage to serve and agenda. Network news programs often employ the same tactics Colbert, but in a much more subtle [sic] fashion. ” (Moore, 299) He then lists examples how network news does these tactics.

He has no proof that network news does this. Nowhere in the article is any citation or proof of how network news employs those tactics. Often network news like CNN have a team of political team members and guests that have conservative and liberal views and there are republican and democrat followers of their party, to put their thoughts on both sides. Then each will take turns on talking about the subject on hand. This method puts Moore’s idea to shame as, any political agenda is now gone as each political party member can explain their ideas.

Moore, explains how a satire sticks out problems and mistakes from politicians regularly stumble from, “In a skit in which Jon Stewart interviewed a conservative political candidate, he exposed inconsistencies in ideological views about life begins” (299) He does this by mixing an unreliable idea with each other to make a point, that the political candidate does not know what he is talking about. Then he includes “Arguments like these help show how poorly constructed arguments or logical Varga 4 fallacies are common tools of news media for political discussions, fascinating ascertain agenda or ideological perspective. Moore, 299) This whole statement is false.

The argument that news media uses fallacies is completely wrong. This one political candidate is only one guy, and does not express the views of other political candidates and politicians and also, the example Moore uses, will most likely never happen on a network news channel. The editorial by Christopher Moore, there are other examples why Moore is wrong with his claim. One example is, major news networks often have creditable correspondents and guests to explain the news.

Another example, is a major one; breaking news is an important part of the news. Satire news like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report is recorded and, like Moore states do not show breaking news. Breaking news like active shooter situations, major bad weather or any other news breaking news is often important to know at the moment instead hours later on a prerecord program. The national news is live and throughout the day has multiple newscasters, that give different thoughts and ideas on the news unlike The Daily Show and The Colbert Report that only have the one host of both TV shows.

Events like, major speeches, presidential candidate primaries, and caucus press conferences and many more live programs are all not covered on The Daily Show and The Colbert Report that Moore might count as major news segments. To conclude, satire news like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report are just not a good source for young people, like college students or high school students. A good news satire like The Daily Show and The Colbert Report is only good to view after the viewer watched national news programs and local news instead of only watching satire news only, viewers just not get the whole picture otherwise.

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