Month: July 2018

I firstly met my group mates in the second week of the class, and my role is Graphics Op, and our topic is legal cannabis and Victorian drug laws. After sharing ideas and further discussion, we decided to stand on the agreed site that support the law of legalize the cannabis in Victoria state. Also, we have watched some interesting examples of comedy news, which gives me a further understanding of what “comedy news” is (since I am international student, I didn’t watch many comedy news before). It is much easier to receive the serious news in comedy news’s way instead of read from words. Furthermore, the facial expression and personal opinion of the host can be a highlight of the program — we can gain some different perspectives that we cannot discover by ourselves. Boring news could become funny from the host’s presenting. Therefore, people prefer to watch the TV program such as Last Week Tonight with John Oliver rather than ABC News.

As the summery from the first week says, comedy news makes information more accessible. The host usually explains the news differently, by leading to another news or fact, thus resonate to audience. What’s more, comedy news commonly being a satire, criticizing or showing the fact or person that cannot be saying in real life (mostly about the political topics); or covering two-sides of an event.

The show Last Week Tonight with John Oliver impresses me. The host Oliver usually raises the topic that unseen issue from a news we might have read or the news we ignored in a funny way. The topic about American preachers and high-cost of healthcare problem. He reveals that the preachers or doctors receive money but doing nothing to public, but nobody can sentence them guilty.

As Gray&Jones&Thompson (2009) said, satire is for positive change; satirist is trying to present their anger or contempt to something or somebody. Audience usually come out with deeper thought after laughing, I think that is a positive significance of comedy news.

 

Reference:

https://www.npr.org/2018/03/07/591457135/john-oliver-finds-humor-in-the-news-no-one-wants-to-hear-about

I found a news that interested me on http://abc.net.au, an online news website of Australia that is well known as ABC news. This news is about the study of robot and the issue of racism which reported by Barbara Heggen and Mariella Attard. It says that racism can be reflected on the color of robots — they are always in white. There are no brown or black color skins on robot since humans carry their racial biases over to robots (Heggen&Attard 2018).

They also present a experiment on different color of robot that shows human change behavior towards dark robot compare to white robot. It proves that there is a bias on different skin colors.

It seems to be an entertaining news because the involved characters are robots — not human. In fact, it brings a really serious problem about racial bias. The bias is so heavy that can even reflect on the production of robots. However, if reporter just post a written news like this, not many readers would notice the significance. I think changing the way of reporting is better to catch the awareness of public.

There is another news points out is issue before on March 11, 2018 (https://www.rt.com/news/420979-robot-racial-bias-study/), but did not raise concern. So do the recent one. It is necessary to make a change. Racial issue is a sensitive topic, I think it is better to publish in the form of comedy news. What’s more, the main object is robot, it would be more funny by presenting in humorous language.

the link of the news: http://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-07-24/we-are-racist-towards-robots-too-study-finds/10029548