Does fake news mislead the public?

The Reading for this week asked the question "Does fake news mislead the public?"  In the reading there are two sides to the question, a yes and no side. The Yes argument was that people are mislead of the real news because they are to caught up in watching comedy shows such as, The Daily Show and The Colbert Report.  This information on the Yes side is very true but the No side has a point of its own.  The No side also did some research and found that a nation wide survey shows that people that are watching these shows are more involved with recognition of the show and not recall of it.  All in all both of these sides had very valid points and true information on this question, and it really can go both ways with who is right and who is wrong.

After reading this chapter and taking notes in class about Hype, Substance, and Humor, we were to go home and watch The Daily Show and The Colbert Report to find clues about how these shows can mislead the public.  In the assignment we had to make a chart with hype, substance, and humor and tally mark in each box every time we saw it in the shows.  We had to make sure and watch these shows on the same day to make them equally matched.  The humor part consists of jokes and laughter in the crowd.  The substance part  was the more serious aspect of the show like the campaign issues and the candidate qualifications.  Lastly, the hype side was about the hoopla and horse race.  After this experiment we had to make a chart showing what both of these shows represented.  Then we had to write a paper on it.

I found that these shows are based off comedy and entertainment for society and not for actual news.  These two shows are about the humor not so much on the true information.  Every fact and event that is discussed is quickly followed by a joke, and i think that is to help the public believe that they have a say in our society.  Any person can watch these shows and get different things out of them, everyone is different and believes what they want to believe.   I think that most people do not like watching the news because it is so depressing and that by having these comedy shows they get entertained and still think they are getting the actual news.