Student Union
Late Night Comedy Not Joking About News
The news can be tough to absorb after awhile, even for a self-described “news junkie.”
“News and current events are definitely something my life has always been centered around,” says Hannah Zeller, 21, who says while in grade school, she knew the names of the news anchors on her local evening news hour.
But even for someone like Zeller, “there is such a thing as too much news,” she says.
So, she turns to late-night programs to stay informed but also to find humor and solace.
“The constant deluge of information can very rapidly shift you from the realm of ‘informed, proactive citizen’ to ‘on-fire garbage can crammed with so much content it ceases to do anything other than feed your anxiety,’” she says. “And once you get to that point, I think it can be really hard to do anything productive with the information you’re consuming.”
Ben Gainsboro, 22, agrees. He and Zeller are not alone in feeling overwhelmed at times.
A 2017 study from the American Psychological Association states that respondents “indicated that they feel conflicted between their desire to stay informed about the news and their view of the media as a source of stress.”
APA’s study indicated that while 95% of those surveyed said “they follow the news regularly,” 56% of the same group said that “doing so causes them stress.”
Although watching television programs such as the “The Tonight Show Starring Jimmy Fallon,” “The Late Show With Stephen Colbert” and “The Daily Show With Trevor Noah" may cover similar topics to traditional news outlets, they “certainly make the news of the day seem a little less intimidating,” Zeller says.
A study by the Pew Research Center stated that “61 percent of young people reported regularly or sometimes learning campaign information from comedy television,” according to the book “Laughing Matters: Humor and American Politics in the Media Age,” edited by Jody C. Baumgartner.
This is likely because hosts of late-night comedy shows make their news material more “digestible,” Zeller says. Nevertheless, she recognizes that what she is viewing is not without bias.
“I think people often watch late-night shows and forget that what they’re seeing isn’t fact free from significant bias,” she says. “Not only are stories skewed for entertainment’s sake, but they’re also targeted towards certain audiences with certain beliefs or opinions, and I think this can sometimes negatively impact a person’s understanding of the facts of a news story.”
Gainsboro, a Massachusetts native, says though he watches “usually around an hour a day” of late-night television, he also recognizes that “comedy news” has risks.
“Comedy news is a dangerous game,” he says, “as people will seemingly believe anything nowadays. Same thing could be said for exaggerated news. I think we need to be better at sorting out the difference, as a society. They are too blurred.”
Yet simultaneously, hosts like Fallon, Colbert and Noah can help younger people feel like the world is a little less grim.
“Watching the news can sometimes make me feel so helpless, like the world is falling apart and there’s little I can do to address it but watch it burn around me,” Zeller says.
“Hearing those same events be made into a punchline for the monologue on ‘The Late Show with Stephen Colbert’ makes them seem less dire, and also like I’m not alone in tackling those events.
“The comedy of late-night TV makes the news consumable and like there’s a community of people out there who are dealing with it right alongside me,” she says.
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US campuses are battlegrounds in free speech debate
This week the University of Southern California canceled the graduation speech of its senior class valedictorian at a time when there is a growing debate over the limits of free speech on American college campuses.
USC’s Asna Tabassum, a Muslim biomedical engineer major, was selected from among 100 outstanding students to address the graduating class of 2024 this May. However, the school withdrew the invitation for her to speak at the graduation ceremony citing safety concerns.
Tabassum denounced the decision, which she attributed to her public support for Palestinian human rights. She said it is part of “a campaign of hate meant to silence my voice.”
The school maintains it is a safety issue, not about free speech. School officials say they received an alarming number of violent threats after selecting her as speaker.
USC is one of many American universities that have struggled with policies over free speech and campus protest since October’s Hamas terrorist attack on Israel and the continuing fighting in Gaza. After weeks or months of on-campus protests and rallies, schools have been taking more forceful action to punish protesters who administrators say have become disruptive.
On Thursday at Columbia University in New York, police arrested more than 100 students who had gathered on campus for pro-Palestinian protests. The school’s dean wrote that the protesters had been told several times that they were violating university policies and would be suspended. The students say they were exercising their free speech rights.
At Washington’s American University, protests in all campus buildings have been banned by the school’s president since January. Under the new policy, students may not hold rallies, engage in silent protests or place posters in any campus building.
Protests and safety
University students have a long history of engaging in political activism. From the Vietnam War to abortion rights, universities have played a key role in American political debates.
However, students now say that schools like AU with a long-standing protest culture are silencing protesters with new rules.
Arusa Islam, American University student body president-elect and current vice president, says the policies are preventing an open discussion about U.S. foreign policy.
“Indoor protesting was never a problem, it was never an issue before October 7th,” Islam said. “Students were allowed to put up posters in buildings and students were allowed to have a silent protest.”
“And now we don’t have that right anymore,” she added. “We have been silenced and it is affecting us greatly.”
American University’s president, Sylvia Burwell, says the school’s new policies are intended to ensure that protests do not disrupt university activity.
Burwell also referred to recent events on campus that “made Jewish students feel unsafe and unwelcome.” She added, antisemitism is abhorrent, wrong, and will not be tolerated at American University.
While administrators insist that they are making narrow restrictions in the interests of providing an education, critics say the policies have a far-reaching effect.
At Cornell University, where new rules took effect in January, Claire Ting, the executive vice president of the Cornell Student Assembly, said the policies have had an unsettling effect on campus.
“The campus climate at Cornell has been tense surrounding free speech in recent times,” Ting emailed VOA.
Ting said that both students and faculty feel the policy has had chilling effects on free expression.
“Students report facing arbitrary, escalating punishment for violating the policy, with the policy itself lacking clear outlines for the consequences of civil disobedience,” she added.
In its new policy Cornell warns students that disciplinary action may be taken if protests impede people or traffic, damage school property or interfere with the school’s operations in any way.
In its campus-wide notice explaining the new guidelines, the school wrote that the new policy would ensure that expressive activity is allowed but must remain nonviolent.
The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, also known as FIRE, has tracked free speech issues on American campuses.
FIRE and College Pulse have produced an annual survey, since 2022, ranking colleges based on their policies and what students say about the free speech climate on campus.
This year the group reported that “alarming” numbers of students say they self-censor or “find their administrations unclear” on free speech issues.
“College campuses have always been places where students have been unafraid to express themselves and with the recent Gaza conflict after the 10/7 attacks, it’s been very heated on both sides of this issue,” said Zach Greenberg, the senior program officer of FIRE.
Harvard ranked last in this year’s survey. FIRE said the school punished some professors and researchers over what they had said or written, and students reported a poor climate for free speech on campus.
The controversy came to Congress late last year, when Harvard’s president testified over complaints of widespread antisemitism.
“I don’t think you’d find many students on campus right now that would say we are the model for flourishing free speech and ideas exchange in the country,” said J. Sellers Hill, president of Harvard’s school newspaper The Harvard Crimson.
“But I think you’ve really seen that be acknowledged by administrators and it seems to be something they are dedicated to taking on.”
As the head of The Harvard Crimson, Hill manages the paper’s 350 editors and 90 reporters, who’ve covered, in detail, the ongoing free speech/protests controversy and the resignation of former President Claudine Gay following her testimony to Congress.
“I think no one would dispute Harvard has work to do and progress to make,” Hill said. “I think it’s a tough sell, for me, that Harvard is uniquely in its own league in terms of intolerance of speech. That doesn’t square with what I have seen on our college campus or on other college campuses around the country. I think Harvard is held to a higher standard.”
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The schools have denied the allegations. (April 2024)
