The Colbert Report: News Satire at its Finest

Satire is tough to perfect, especially if it is on a consistent and current basis. Stephen Colbert of The Today Show, managed to combine goofy humor, extensive knowledge of politics and current events, and his ability to stay in character, while simultaneously poking fun at conservative news talk shows.

Colbert's show, The Colbert Report, appeared for nine years on Comedy Central, quickly becoming one of the most popular and highest rated shows on the channel. Because Colbert was able to caricature such a good representation of the exaggeration of an uber-patriotic, stereotypical right-wing broadcaster, he was able to speak about current events, providing context and information of what was happening in the world today.

Although the show was mostly centered around US politics, people of all different ages can watch it for man different reasons. The show is also very well written; there are many jokes that can range from idiotic and ignorant (in character with Colbert's anchorman portrayal), or, extremely poignant and indicative of American politics, through a satirical lens. It also features several different bits, all of them clever in their own way, and more impressively, related to the very shows he is imitating and parodying. Colbert features several faux correspondents in his show, conducting interviews to spin a perspective that is intriguing and comedic.

Colbert had an incredible plethora of guests, from republicans, to liberals, that he would interview and often use his persona to instigate. One of the best traits of these interviews was that sometimes he would have an extremely conservative guest, and through Colbert's equally radical and loony character, would spout out nonsense that the guest would seem to be genuinely going along with Colbert.

As sad as it is that The Colbert Report is no more, it is still an excellent demonstration of news satire in the 21st Century.

Sorry Trump, Its Yet Another Biased Poll

This poll from satirical news site, the Onion, uses high amounts of sarcasm to poke fun both at Trump and the institution of mainstream media. The fake poll reads as though the country is split between many responses such as "Yes the media is biased, they read a speech verbatim" and "No the media is not, that would require a sense of purpose". Every potential response is dripping in sarcasm, forcing the reader to acknowledge how absurd Trump and oftentimes media itself are. Trump's incessant claims of the media's bias are satirized in the first and last listed responses, which claim that the media is biased for reporting exact facts, or that Trump's own bias makes the media biased. The reader is forced to acknowledge how absurd Trump's claims truly are that the media is biased because it doesn't always paint him in a positive light (which would, in fact, also be a bias).

Other responses poke fun at media as a whole. One option claims that the media is biased against Trump because he is a powerful white man, none of whom have had very much success at getting positive media representation. Given much of the criticism in the past few years about how the media does the exact opposite of that, and the call for more non-male non-white representation, this statement causes the reader to remember those criticisms and think of what biases the media does have and how they affect the way Trump and others are portrayed. Another potential response claims that the media would have to have a sense of purpose to be biased against Trump. The sarcasm here comes from a rather pessimistic perspective, claiming that the media has no principle or purpose anymore, and leading the reader to think hard about whether or not the media is trustworthy and useful or if it just all flashy and for show without a regard for facts.