Post Truth and the Blooming of Late Night Shows

Republican Donald Trump’s winning on the 2016 US presidential election brought the term post-truth into effect to another level. Post-truth, which Oxford Dictionary pronounced as the word of the year 2016 is defined as an adjective relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief. This phenomenon, combined with the distrust from both democrats and republicans in media’s watchdog role paved the way for late night show hosts to ride the wave of public’s need for objectivity. They have the wit, edge, and as Vox’s Carlos Maza put it, the ‘zero tolerance to bullshit’ policy. These characters are how they appeal to apparently quite large number of those in need for straight facts in political reporting. This shows how US’s citizens preferences have shifted regarding where some would get their daily dose of updates from and thus, the blooming of political late night shows.

US Presidential Election; Fake News Everyday

The 2016 US presidential election was well decorated with colourful headlines. From Pope Francis was said to endorse Donald Trump for president, which forced the Pope to clarify that he never said a word about the US elections and reminding the Catholics to stay aware of the danger from fake news, to Trump playing around with America’s famous drag queens back in the 90s. But most fake news brought into the headlights were those of Hillary Clinton, Trump’s main democratic opposition in the race. She was the subjects of many widespread hoax –mostly circulating on facebook, with no clear credible source, but gained millions of engagements. It said that Hillary was selling drugs to ISIS complete with another widespread false statement of ISIS leaders calling Americans to support her. She was even said to have emails leaked suspected of using the term ‘pizza’ to hide a ‘secret, underground network of human trafficking’ (Ritchie, 2016).

For as long as there’s been fake news, there have been those who’ve sought to capitalise on it politically (Graves, 2018). Trump has widely used the essence of fake news in post truth era itself, shaping public opinion with appeals to emotion and personal belief. He talked about these hoaxes a lot. He said things like ‘Hillary and her e-mails,’ as key campaign issue, bringing it up over and over, and leading chants of “lock her up” at his rallies (Daniel and Olson, 2019). Back then, politicians caught in lies are deeply ashamed and have the need to publicly apologize in order to at least salvage some their credibility. Now, the truth have been so devaluated that what once was the standard in political debates (facts) has no value (Norman, 2016).

Views on News Media’s Watchdog Role

Pew Research Center released the statistics showing how the Democrats and Republicans remain majorly split on support for news media’s watchdog role in 2018. It shows that even with most supporting the idea of news media having the role of a watchdog, a lot fails to see the fairness within their ways of coverage. About two-thirds of Americans (68%) say that news organisations tend to favor one side when they cover political and social issues, compared with just almost 30% who say that news organisations deal fairly with all sides. The portion who says they tend to favor one side is slightly lower than in 2016, when 74% said so. (Gottfried, Stocking & Grieco, 2019).

While 82% of Democrats support the media’s position of keeping political leaders in check, only 38% of Republicans agreed, and a majority of conservatives said the media’s watchdog role prevents politicians from doing their jobs. Two years ago, before the 2016 election, about three-fourths of both Republicans and Democrats expressed support for the news media’s watchdog role. Last year, however, the parties diverged sharply in their views, and in 2018 Democrats continue to be about twice as likely as Republicans to support this role (82% vs. 38%, respectively). This 44-percentage-point difference is about as large as that seen in 2017, when there was a 47-point gap. (Gottfried, Stocking & Grieco, 2019)

The fact that two thirds American sees that news outlet have biases in covering political and social issues shows how one way or another, the news media itself legitimates post truth by sprinkling bias over their coverage. Programs inviting certain political figures to debate on livestream was well-utilised by people like Trump’s campaign spokesperson Kellyanne Conway, as there is no time to fact check what she will say on the platform and the hosts are bind to follow the rules and ‘go with it’. The characteristic of these programs –lengthy, the talking over each other style, the front-camera blur– drive some viewers further and looking for another source of political feeds. This, is where late night shows seize the opportunity and scoops in to take the role. The republicans scepticism on media roles are ploughing the soil for left-leaning late-night hosts to bloom.

The Witty, On-Point Remarks, and No Sugar Coat Policy

An example on how late-night shows is utilising the witty edge, combined with on-point remarks and no sugar coat policy can be seen, for example, on recent Late Night with Seth Myers coverage on a segment on his show called A Closer Look. He addressed how Republican senates, such as Mitch McConnell, said to be juries on Trump impeachment trials blatantly stated that their take on the trials are: they do not need any witnesses, they want to keep it as quick as possible, and there will be no differences on the stances –they will take orders from the President himself– on a Fox News program a few days earlier. Senator Graham even states “I’m not trying to pretend to be a fair juror here,”. Myers then came back with a sharp remark, “They’re supposed to be the jury and they’re literally going on TV admitting they’re not going to be impartial,” or Stephen Colbert’s –the leading political late-night show host– take on this by quoting the juror’s oath line, “I solemnly swear I will do impartial justice according to the Constitution and laws: So help me God.”

The dynamics of these late night hosts are essentially: politicians making statements showing qualities that they should not have –and should have been wronged for having so– as politicians on formal news platform with said news media having no capacity to point it out. This is where they answer to the apparently large crowd, in need of entertaining and actually relatable political coverage. Seth Shapiro, a governor for the Television Academy, stated that “Humour coupled with righteous indignation works even more when you are pissed off,” says Shapiro. “If they can articulate anger in a funny way, that is ratings gold,” (Berg, 2017).

Political Late Night Shows are Topping the Rating Charts

The whole post-truth –or at some point, post-Trump– phenomenon are being exploited by late-night hosts who are not afraid and have the capacity to turn political matters into a well-compiled stand up materials. And when they do achieve this, it sells. Hosts like Stephen Colbert and Seth Myers on national TV, Trevor Noah and John Oliver on cable TV have gained a great amount of materials solely from the Donald Trump saga –starting from his candidacy to his policies and actions as President.

Non-political late night shows hosted by the Jimmys –Jimmy Fallon and Jimmy Kimmel– has always placed first and second on the rating charts. But when Colbert’s episode starring Jon Stewart and filled with Trump jokes on early 2017, the episode placed Colbert’s ratings surpassed Fallon’s usual first place, not to mention the YouTube nearly 5 million views. Last year, when Trump started to appear in his monologues, Meyers saw his ratings jump 6%, and he consistently bests his competition from ABC’s Nightline and CBS’ Late Late Show with James Corden (Berg, 2017). Less dominantly, these shows are also going for the other side, by poking fun out of the Democrats antics such as the too many candidate presidential race. This rating rise implies that the public is enjoying this take on delivering news. The segments uploaded on YouTube also achieve significant amount of views, reaching to a broader audience that formal news media fails to attract.

Wake Up Call for the News Media

Late-night political comedy shows are answering the need for fresh and honest way of delivering political news. While it is fun to watch, the current nuance that supposedly entertainment shows are taking over formal news outlets’ check and balance function can not be the norms. Formal news media needs to salvage their credibility in political coverage, working to rebuild the trust and reduce the nuance that they are biased to one side. Strict steps such as making sure their named hosts are not having public political affiliation and strengthening their fact-checking function are the way to go.

REFERENCES

Berg, M. (2019). Dumping On Trump Pays Off For Late-Night TV Shows. Retrieved 5 December 2019, from https://www.forbes.com/sites/maddieberg/2017/02/03/john-oliver-stephen-colbert-jimmy-fallon-daily-show-in-late-night-tv-it-pays-off-to-dump-on-trump/#8d39c8535d7d

Daniel, Z., & Olson, E. (2019). Trump’s 2016 election obsession may come back to haunt him in 2020. Retrieved 20 December 2019, from https://www.abc.net.au/news/2019-10-25/trump-obsession-over-clinton-emails-could-hurt-impeachment/11638262

Gottfried, J., Stocking, G., & Grieco, E. (2019). 1. Democrats and Republicans remain split on support for news media’s watchdog role. Retrieved 5 December 2019, from https://www.journalism.org/2018/09/25/democrats-and-republicans-remain-split-on-support-for-news-medias-watchdog-role/

Graves, L. (2018). How Trump Weaponized ‘Fake News’ for His Own Political Ends. Retrieved 20 December 2019, from https://psmag.com/social-justice/how-trump-weaponized-fake-news-for-his-own-political-ends

Keyes, R. (2004). The post-truth era: Dishonesty and deception in contemporary life. Macmillan.

Norman, M. (2016). We’ve entered a post-truth world and there’s no going back. Retrieved from https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/us-election-2016-donald-trump-hillary-clinton-who-wins-post-truth-world-no-going-back-a7404826.html

Ritchie, H. (2016). Read all about it: The biggest fake news stories of 2016. Retrieved 20 December 2019, from https://www.cnbc.com/2016/12/30/read-all-about-it-the-biggest-fake-news-stories-of-2016.html

Vox. (2017). Comedians have figured out the trick to covering Trump [Video]. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fUDIucr2eo&list=PLJ8cMiYb3G5cghzLdchzalWpQJnhRYZgO&index=38&t=0s

Wang, A. (2016). ‘Post-truth’ named 2016 word of the year by Oxford Dictionaries. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-fix/wp/2016/11/16/post-truth-named-2016-word-of-the-year-by-oxford-dictionaries/