Sec. 701
The Daily Show Devices If you enjoy political humor, you may find The Daily Show to be a television show that has your interest. It is a show thats aired on comedy central. Jon Stewart is the host of the show and his job responsibilities are to take all the recent “ hard news “ going on, and makes jokes, parodies, videos, interviews, and anything else to deliver his comical humor in political news. “The Daily Show is first a comedy, and the audience is in their seats because they expect to laugh.” (Barbur, Goodnow) Well for Jon Stewart, (who runs the show) he has to do the best he can to make it happen.
The segment I chose of The Daily Show was published on June 22, 2012. Jon Stewart discusses an Operation called Fast and Furious. This operation is about our government smuggling guns into Mexico, also resulting with a death of one United States Border Patrol Agent. Then continues to explain that within the recent months the committee had been requesting documents from Holder requesting information released to the case. After failing to meet his deadline that week, Holder was held contempt by House Oversight and faces a House vote next week.
In order for Stewart to keep his fans he has to use all different kinds of ethos (tools of persuasion) within his show. “Persuasion has been understood as centered on “a speakers knowledge of the varieties and complexities of human character.” For example, Stewart is a big fan of intelligence or good sense. There are four keys ways which The Daily Show exhibits these traits. “First, through the type of news that it covers; second, through its strategy of remediating clips drawn from other media; third, through its exaggerated parodies of news reports and journalistic conventions; and fourth, in its interview segment, particularly its selection of guests.” (Barbur, Goodnow)
To elaborate on that more, Stewart knows the people enjoy politics and humor. Therefore, most of shows consist of video taped political parodies. For example, on a segment of The Daily Show, Stewart was discussing an issue on the news relating to guns being smuggled to mexican drug runners. To find out the guns came from our own government. With no shock, he begins to mock a video clip of the scene by describing how unorganized our government is. Jon Stewart doesn’t play clips in his show to provide factual information, but to point out any humor he can find. Although, “The Daily Show incorporates roughly the same amount of actual information as does the mainstream broadcast journalism.”( Fox, 2007)
The Daily Show definitely distributes its fair share of satire in Jon Stewarts skits. This type of tools he uses for his political satire helps Jon stewart involve humor with topics that are considered important. The Daily Show has several tools that Stewart uses as a host, although the segment that I chose has two that stuck out to me. The two tools are referred to as “ benevolence/goodwill ”, and anthropomorphism. In order to have all the interests of the audience, you have to touch base with your audiences interest. Jon Stewart tries to make his show involve the interests of the people, to have them watch the show more often. This is a type of ethos used in all different medias today. It would be refereed to as “ benevolence ” or “ goodwill ”. “ This can be considered something like friendship or just connecting with your audience. For example in the same segment as mentioned earlier, Jon Stewart is discussing the guns being smuggled to mexico by our own government, and he was indicated that the people of the United States, more so families, don’t feel safe with our government giving distributing weaponry to another country. Especially when its a number of over two thousand guns accounted for. The effect of Jon Stewart using this technique is his segments helps grab the audiences attention. Being a host on a major show, its important to keep your viewers entertained, so by delivering his scripts
