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Political Satire's News Function in the Aftermath of Trump's Election

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Political Satire's News Function in the Aftermath of Trump's Election Political Satire’s News Function in the Aftermath of Trump’s Election: A Content Analysis of American News Programmes and Political Satire Shows Margien Timmer 12334286 Master’s Thesis Graduate School of Communication Master’s programme Communication Science Supervisor: Dr. M. Boukes June 28th, 2019 Abstract The unexpected victory of Donald Trump as 45th President of the United States and the unprecedented events that followed his election provided a constant stream of content for political satirists. These satirists see themselves as entertainers, but the public may perceive their content as a source of news. While television news programmes and their objectivity as well as their interpretive role suffer under the tense commercial market, the question is how satire may fill this gap. This study evaluated how these two television genres differed or overlapped in their coverage of President Trump after the 2016 US presidential election. The results showed that while political satire was far more negative and emotional in their coverage than news programmes, there are also other major differences between those news programmes. News programmes covered mainly policy issues, while political satire focused more on personal issues. Although speculated about in the literature, this study found political satire to be unsuited to serve an interpretative news role in the evaluated time period, as their items were shorter than that of news programmes. Lastly, political satire uses a lot of escapist jokes, especially after the inauguration. The difference between the time period after the election and after the inauguration was expected to have a moderating function on the differences between the two genres, but this was not the case. Political satire continues to be mainly a source of entertainment and escapism, while news programmes provide considerably more objective and substantive coverage. Key words: political satire, television news, news functions, Donald Trump, objectivity 2 Introduction “For eight years a lot of people wouldn’t accept that Barack Obama was President of the United States, for instance Donald Trump. But, like it or not, for the record… not. We have to accept that Donald Trump will be the 45th President of the United States (booing).” Stephen Colbert made his discontent of the election outcome clear on his late night show the day after the presidential election in 2016. Similar tones of disbelief could be found on the covers of national and international newspapers (Nichols, 2016; Victor, 2016; Witte & Denver, 2016); the whole world was surprised that this businessman and television personality could win the US Presidency over a veteran politician and former first lady. Yet, Colbert’s comment also established that the election was final and people had to accept the outcome. The day before the election Hillary Clinton was given an eighty-five percent chance to win (Katz, 2016). According to Michael Wolff’s bestseller book Fire and Fury, even the now- President himself nor anyone in his team believed he could or would win. The election outcome and the series of unprecedented events that followed were golden material for political satirists and comedians, even though the events themselves were almost satire-like (Gleiberman, 2016). Late night talk show hosts had daily content for their monologues and critiquing Trump turned out to be a successful endeavour to attract audiences. Especially the ratings of the outspoken The Late Show with Stephen Colbert (LSSC) grew consistently as compared to the more neutral The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon (Morgan, 2017). Although the main goal of political satire is to entertain, more and more people have turned to it as a source of news (Young & Tissinger, 2006, p. 128). As early as the 2000s, concern grew over the role of late night talk show hosts as political commentators, especially as they were increasingly seen as actual political commentators by their audience rather than just comedians (Jones, 2005, p. 92). Because satirists do not claim to be journalists, political satirists can be bolder in their opinions and expressions (Abel & Barthel, 2013). This 3 accumulated to such a point that traditional news broadcasters expressed their wish to act as freely and opinionated as former The Daily Show-host Jon Stewart (Abel & Barthel, 2013). With this increasing importance of political satire as a news provider, the question remains to what extent the combination of comedy and information follows traditional conceptions of news production. Jon Stewart, of The Daily Show (TDS) until 2015, spoke about the role satirists should play during difficult political situations: “there are times when it’s not about making a joke, it’s about having to acknowledge what is going on, so you can feel like you’re still in the same world as everyone else (Jones, 2005, p. 116).” There were more jokes than substantive content in the TDS political coverage of the 2004 presidential campaign (Fox, Koloen & Sahin, 2007). In an even more complex political situation in the US in the aftermath of the 2016 election, did political satire turn into a more serious news source or was it all comedy? And is there a difference between the period after the election when people were still surprised of the outcome and the period after the inauguration when the result had settled in? It is believed that a functioning democracy requires its people to have a certain level of political knowledge (Sotirovic & McLeod, 2004). Such knowledge is often derived from television news (Pew Research Centre, 2017). While traditional news media like to see themselves as objective and rational, political satire looks partisan and emotional. Most journalists identify themselves as interpreters and analysers of the news, but is it not political satire that actually spends more time analysing the news? Satire deconstructs both the message and the messenger (Alonso, 2018), without the time pressure or “breaking news” sensationalism that traditional news encounter (Cushion, Rodger & Lewis, 2014). This leads to the following research question: How did American political satire differ from and overlap with traditional news programmes in their coverage of President Trump after the 2016 US presidential election? 4 Theoretical Framework: The Rise of Political Satire “Political news is shaped by the extent to which news media meet the societal expectations towards them (Scherr, Bachl & DeVreese, 2018, p. 2).” What society expects of the news depends on the political and economic situations (Scherr et al., 2018, p. 2), but also on peoples direct needs or desires (Hanson & Haridakis, 2008). The uses and gratification theory assumes that an audience is actively selecting media that serve their individual and societal needs (McQuail, 2012, p. 423-5). With a decrease in news consumption from traditional media, more Americans consume their news across different platforms (Gilde Zuñiga & Hinsley, 2013, p. 928). Television remains the main source of news for most Americans, but the percentage of Americans who frequently watch television news has dropped from 57% in 2016 to 50% a year later. This was only 7% higher than those who often consumed online news in 2016 (Pew Research Centre, 2017). A television genre that has undeniably captured the interest of the American youth is political satire (Meddaugh, 2010). The long-running shows Saturday Night Live and TDS now have competitors on most channels with more than ten political satire talk shows having aired during the election of 2016 (Martin, 2016). By combining humour and information these shows make the news interesting for a group that does not naturally consume a lot of news (Meddaugh, 2010; Rottinghaus, Bird, Ridout & Self, 2008). Even though humorous news content is perceived as less serious, credible and informing than those messages without a comedic tone, humorous messages do absorb people deeper in the content (Nabi, Moyer-Gusé & Byrne, 2007; Boukes, Boomgaarden, Moorman & De Vreese, 2015). When people see that they can get a reward in the form of a laugh, they concentrate better on the message. While in Holbert’s 2005 typology of political entertainment programmes political satire was still an “underdeveloped line of research” (p. 441), nowadays much more is known about 5 mostly the effects political satire may have. Political satire has the capacity to set both the short- term public and the long-term political agenda (Boukes, 2018). Especially when there is a longer focus on one subject, which was not often the case in political satire of the early 2000s. Yet, current late night talk shows like Late Night with Seth Meyers (LNSM) or Last Week Tonight also have longer segments that focus on one subject. While political satirists still consider themselves as entertainers, the public sees it differently. The term the ‘Fifth Estate’ has even come up to describe late night comedy (Meddaugh, 2010, p. 377). TDS was already nominated for an award for best newscast and Jon Stewart was named as most important newscaster in the US (Baym, 2005). Political satire content is also not just entertainment. A content analysis of twelve years of political satire interviews showed that most interviewed guests were people with an intellectual occupation, like politicians, academics or journalists (Becker & Goldberg, 2017, p. 135). The power of political satire is undeniable and with this comes a responsibility. The next section will look at the role of traditional media in a democracy and to what extent political satire can provide a similar role. Media and Democracy A working democracy requires citizens to make informed decisions. Following Althaus (2011), this statement needs a normative assessment. Strömbäck (2005) discusses theories about the role of citizens and media in a democracy. For this study, a deliberative democracy is considered the normative goal a society should aim for in which the media can help open a conversation between parties in a time where this seems unlikely (Klar, Krupnikov & Ryan, 2019).
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