It can be difficult to separate fact from opinion during any newscast, but comedy programs like “The Daily Show” and “The Colbert Report” can make it even tougher.
“Think about what is news,” Assistant Professor of Mass Media Joe Watson said. “Based on the criteria for a story to be news, ‘The Daily Show’ meets that. It is really a news program.”
This idea led Watson to create his interterm class based on Jon Stewart’s popular show, a class that allowed students to discuss the serious material in a humorous way. Although he admitted to being “nervous” going into the start of the interterm session, he said the class was very productive.
“Sometimes it’s hard to make students connect to the material,” he said. “I’d never had the opportunity to do such a fun, creative class. It was a graded class, and they had daily current events quizzes. They did a serious oral presentation, and then later they got to do a group presentation where they could be funny and present information like the show.”
The humor of the show was what drew sophomore Tanner Christenson, a business and marketing major, into the class.
“I thought ‘The Daily Show’ was funny, and the class sounded fun,” he said. “It was just about learning how they present the news, how they try to be funny to draw in college kids. But you can get news from (‘The Daily Show’) because even though they’re funny, it’s real news.”
This was just one of the points that Watson had hoped he would get across to the class.
“The majority of the class were non-media majors,” Watson said. “I wanted to explain the principles of media in society. ‘The Daily Show’ is a source of news for a lot of people. Studies have shown that college students who get their information from late-night television are 16 percent more likely to be aware of what’s going on in the world than viewers of regular programs. I wanted to let them see how the media works.”
Watson said no matter what a student’s field of study or interests may be, knowing how to separate fact from fiction is a powerful tool.
“It doesn’t matter what your major is. You can’t escape the media.”
