A new study looks at the positive things that can happen when journalism and comedy intersect

Sara Ödmark: I am a journalist. I teach journalism now, but my research field is political comedy. I wrote my dissertation on the role of political comedians in societal debates. In recent years we’ve seen this development where humor and comedy are being taken more seriously and being considered as part of the societal negotiations. We see it in so many ways that this re-politicization of humor and comedy is more present in all forms of societal debate. I’m interested in the intersection between journalism and comedy. It’s this sort of blurring of boundaries that’s really fascinating to me. It’s sort of been proven in the media landscape of today that comedians have been very successful in this media fragmented landscape to get their points across.

Ödmark: I’m interested in the specific sub-genre of journalistic news satire, which has developed starting with the evolution of “The Daily Show” when Jon Stewart took over, but it has evolved even more from that, becoming more and more sort of journalistic in a sense, and it has had a lot of global success. The Swedish show, for instance, has been very vocal about having “Last Week Tonight” as a role model. It’s just this specific sub-genre that captures this intersection that I’m looking at. The production teams consist of journalists and comedians working together. It’s a cross-pollination of expertise and creative outputs that’s really exciting….It was very good material to look at these blurred boundaries.

Ödmark: When I talk about this, a lot of journalists have this knee-jerk reaction, like, “So now I need to be funny?”

No, I don’t think journalists need to be funny. I think you need to play to your strengths. Comedy is very difficult. As a journalist, you should strive to be engaging and relevant. But [news satire] is a specific sub-genre. It’s a form of opinion journalism. I wouldn’t say that as a journalist, you should have this feeling that you need to be entertaining…But you should be aware of this genre because [it has] this completely different approach where they are more personal, more emotional, and it allows them to connect with audiences.

[For news satirists], it’s all about what your goals are. Of the people I’ve interviewed, there are two different types. One just wants to be funny and be an entertainer. The other ones want to affect social change and be part of the societal debate and discussion. It’s good to know which type you are. If you want to engage with societal debate, this could be a good avenue for that.

[For consumers], it’s a form of opinion journalism. There’s a huge debate and discussion about journalistic objectivity. In my interviews, the production teams usually say, like, ‘This is a news show. We want to be a news show where you get what you need from last week’s news,’ but it is from a specific point of view.

There’s always been this debate about [whether] people are getting [most or all of] their news from these types of shows. What we have seen is that usually the audience for these kinds of shows are interested in politics and news, so they usually consume other news as well. Sure, there are some people who prefer the entertainment format, but its importance shouldn’t be overstated. You should know that it is a specific point of view, and that’s different in different countries. The American version has a stronger political leaning compared to the Swedish show that is more about being unpredictable. They want to be striking in all directions and not have this ideological core. There are some some differences there. But it’s still not neutral.

One of the findings of the study is that the [presence of the] reporter role, which is that of the neutral observer and disseminator of news — that’s very, very [uncommon in these shows]. They are almost always taking a stance, being emotional and personal. One of the [only] “reporter” indicators we found was that they lay out different sides of an issue. They score high on “advocate,” “watchdog,” and “civic educator.” It’s often educational but it’s subjective.

Ödmark: We introduced a new role that I think is interesting to talk about in these contexts, which is the “comedic interlocutor.” It’s not discussed as much when you talk about journalistic roles. There is a “joker” role, which is about being funny, trying to be entertaining, but the interlocutor is more about creating a relationship with the audience — being in dialogue, a friend who guides you through the news, educates you, and helps you strengthen your beliefs.

That was something we saw really strongly with the evolution of “The Daily Show.” It’s what people came there for.

Ödmark: The media landscape is fragmented and ever-changing. We see these blurring of boundaries and these blurring of the different professional roles and genres, and I think this kind of mapping is helpful because it’s being concrete about what we’re talking about. In my interviews, when I asked people, “Are you journalists?” they would say no. But if I asked them “Is what you do journalistic?” they say yes, of course.

I think it’s helpful to break things down and look at which aspects of journalism are present, and how that helps us assess what this is or isn’t and the function it has in the bigger picture of the media landscape.

Ödmark: That’s the money question. If you go back to humor theory, there’s this idea that humor in a message increases attention to that message, but it also signals unimportance; it increases attention, but it’s also easily dismissed.

That’s why I think this genre is so important, because now it’s more established and the hosts are more established, you don’t have this signal of unimportance anymore. People have some kind of an idea of John Oliver being serious and honest. You know that there is fact-checking involved so you don’t get that dismissiveness that easily. There’s still some of that [questioning if] you should you take them seriously, but that’s changing.

[On] the shortcomings of journalism being more engaging, it’s hard because we have these ideals in journalism of objectivity. You shouldn’t just throw these ideas away, but it’s all about how you do things. We saw in the U.S. in the Trump era that people started seeing journalistic objectivity as a problem when reporting about all these absurdities that happened. They said the comedians are better at at covering Trump because they can call out the absurdities in a more straightforward way, when journalists just couldn’t be as direct.

It’s all about being relevant for your audience. You shouldn’t think too much about being entertaining. It’s more about being relevant and doing the stories that matter to people. There’s always the question of what you can learn from this more personal, more emotional approach. There’s always this balance of how how [far] can you go and still have credibility. The audience is kind of aware that there is no such thing as objectivity; nobody is completely neutral. What they appreciate with news satirists is the transparency [about the] point of view. Transparency is always good in journalism as well.