Higgins Hall played host to a trio of media and communication experts Tuesday night, who discussed "Satire as Informing" in a panel discussion sponsored by Americans for Informed Democracy (AID) of Boston College. In an evening of serious consideration, and some lighthearted fun at the expense of American political and media leaders, panelists bantered about the success of political satire, its benefits and pitfalls, and what it all says about American society.
The evening's three panelists were posed a series of questions by the students in AID and, later, the broader audience. They kicked off the discussion by examining the meteoric rise in popularity of satirical news sources like The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, and The Onion.
"A guy like John Stewart is an aggregator—he watches shows so you don't have to," said John Carroll, professor in the mass communication department at Boston University. He noted that Stewart and contemporaries gain popularity by acting as collectors, centralizers, and synthesizers of news in entertaining ways.
"The popularity [of satirical news] is in direct relation to the lack of larger debate," said Amber Day, a professor in the English and cultural studies department at Bryant University. Amongst mainstream media, she said, "there is an inability to figure out how to say a person's full of s—."
"A lot of what makes satire funny is supporting what we already believe," said Tom Bodett, a media commentator and regular on NPR's Wait Wait … Don't Tell Me!
In discussing the power of satire in society, the panelists seemed to agree that satirical news had the potential to inform and spur action while entertaining, especially when supplemented with more serious news sources.
"Being a citizen in a democracy is about much more than pulling a lever on Election Day," Day said, in reference to the thoughtful conversation and new terms of debate satire can engender.
"Today is probably the heyday of satire," Bodett said. "Our inauthentic politics almost requires it."
"John Stewart would be the first to say, ‘Don't just watch my show,'" Carroll said. "Satire is one part of an overall media diet."
The panelists metered their praise of satirical news as thought-provoking and potentially change-inducing with fears that satire has a darker possibility of creating a jaded, disaffected country.
"I do worry about the negative effects—we can diminish the office itself at times," Bodett said. "If all we're doing is laughing at our leaders, it begs for a new kind of leader," he added.
Carroll spoke to the blurring of "hard" journalism and entertainment as hazardous, too. "One of the dangers is being too entertaining," he said, speaking of a desire for all news to be packaged as entertainment when much of current events require serious examination.
The panelists also expressed concern that satire, for all its fun, might be helping to erode the negotiating grounds of democracy by feeding partisan hackery.
"Understanding the other side as being full of complete idiots dehumanizes them and breaks down debate and any hope of compromise," Bodett said.
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