COM/WRI 212 - Blog #5

I watched the March 19^th, 2015 episode of “The Daily Show with John Stewart”. In the episode, Stewart spoke about Fox News reporting of the Ferguson second report findings. The second report finding stated that there was some racial biases and Fox News just wanted to the other forms of media to apologize for giving false information.

Stewart went further by talking about the Benghazi innocent and the officially released findings by the mostly republican house intelligence committee. He compared the two findings and stated that Fox News should apologize for reporting falsely on the innocent. Steward states that Fox News doesn’t hold itself to the standards they hold other people.

            Later in the show, Steward breaks the very serious news into something comical. The comical news is that the United States is buying chess players to win their first gold metal in chess in the last decade. He and his correspondent, Trevor Noah, have a little banter back and forth about why the US is buying the chess players, which is because the US wants to be better and get back at Russia. This part of the show is funnier allowing for the audience to relax and laugh at little. Stewart plays the role of typical American and they give many pop culture references during this part of the show.

            The last part of the show was an interview with Will Ferrell. This was another comical segment for the show. This had really no news content other then the promotion of Will Ferrell’s new movie “Get Hard” and reminder that “The Daily Show with John Stewart” while be no more since John Stewart recently announced he’d be leaving the show. The March 19^th episode, I watched was very content heavy in the beginning but allowed itself to shallow the episode with more comical news.

            Overall, I feel like the episode was very content and serious in the beginning and to lighten the mood, so the show brought in a comical news story and a comedy actor to make it seems not so heavy. I do believe that entertaining and comedic news is a great way for people to get their information. I have many friend who don’t watch the news but watch shows like “The Daily Show with John Stewart” to get their information from what is going on in the world. I believe Stewart has found a great balance of funny and serious in his time on television. He can deliver very serious news to the audience and make a sensible joke about the hard news. Sometimes news giving out by majority news stations is very serious and dry but “The Daily Show” gives a refresh, lighthearted version of the news. The lighthearted version of news is still countable and reliable but isn’t as dry. When news gets to serious, people tend to want to forget about how bad the world may be but will comical and entertaining news the audience will want to remember or will remember the news more due to the way of the delivery.