Fake news shows are not only at least as real as the mainstream news, but also … contribute more to the type of deliberative discourse essential to genuine democracy.
-Amarnath Amarasingam, author, in The Stewart / Colbert Effect: Essays on the Real Impacts of Fake (2001)
studio prompt:
‘Is fake news the real news?’
description:
This studio will focus on an exploration of TV comedy news: what makes it distinct as a media form, what its appeal is and how it is made. The relationship between serious information and entertainment in television news has always been a blurred one.
However, the rise of fake or comedy news in the 21st century has complicated this relationship in unprecedented ways. Prominent examples of this phenomenon include The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, The Colbert Report and Last Week Tonight with John Oliver in the US, and The Chaser’s War on Everything, The Weekly with Charlie Pickering and Shaun Micallef’s Mad as Hell in Australia. Appealing to younger audiences and designed to work across multiple platforms, what is behind the rise of comedy news?
This studio will explore the topic of TV comedy news through viewing, reading, discussing and making various comedy news segments. The multi-camera TV studio will be used for the production of your works. You will develop ideas for comedy news segments, then research, script and produce them over the course of the semester. You will learn about the operation of the TV studio and use it to apply your knowledge of comedy news to the production of several segments.
aims
- to investigate TV comedy news as a media form for entertainment and raising awareness of social issues in 21st century democratic societies
- to develop ideas, research, script, produce and present TV comedy news segments
- to learn how to work in a TV studio as a creative and collaborative media productionspace