Comedic journalism

Comedic journalism is a new form of journalism, popularized in the twenty-first century, that incorporates a comedic tone to transmit the news to mass audiences, using humour and/or satire to relay a point in news reports. Comedic journalism has been applied to print media in the past but has experienced a resurgence through the medium of television with shows such as The Daily Show, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, and The Rick Mercer Report. Conversely, there has been much criticism about defining these media outlets as “journalism”, since some scholars believe there should be a distinction kept between comedy and journalism.

An early example of comedic journalism in Canada is Frank magazine, founded in Nova Scotia in 1987. According to their website, Frank is a source of news, satire, opinion, comment and humour. They were inspired by the UK magazine Private Eye, which also uses satire and comedy when reporting on current affairs. Frank not only focuses on current affairs, but also existing stories long after they have disappeared from mainstream news media. Many consider the magazine to be a “scandal sheet”, a news source that should not be taken seriously. However, Frank magazine’s counter-argument is that the only thing “wicked” about them is how they expose the sins of others.

In 1989, Frank magazine also started circulating in Ottawa. This version of the magazine was not as popular as the original and stopped circulation both in print and online in 2008. Publisher Michael Bates believed that the downfall of the magazine was the rise in popularity of the satirical form of journalism in the twenty-first century. He explained that they had the field of satirical journalism to themselves in the 1990s, but more publications started to pick up this form of journalism and the Ottawa magazine could no longer compete. He also mentioned the rise of the internet as a cause for the new popularity of this form of media.

James W. Carey did not believe that journalists could be defined as conveyors of information. Instead, he presented two alternate viewpoints of communication: the transmission view of communication and the ritual view of communication. The transmission view of communication highlights the importance of information being sent out over large distances in order to convey knowledge and ideas to a mass audience. This viewpoint is more commonly seen in industrial communities where focus is put on the extension of the message. Alternatively, the ritual viewpoint of communication focuses more on the sharing of information amongst a large group of people. Therefore, the focus is not on the extension of the message, but towards the maintenance of society over time. Carey argued that this viewpoint is not as prevalent in American society because the concept of culture is weak in American social thought.

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