In the last decade, political satire has increasingly become a large part of the way American’s get their news. “Is that the first five minutes of a presidency or a terminator movie? What the hell is that?” is a quote from an episode of The Daily Show with Trevor Noah expressing Trevor’s discontent with the failures in president Trump’s inauguration speech (Noah). Being in a position of prominence where thousands of people will use one’s information to form their own opinion comes with a certain innate responsibility to control personal bias to ensure crowds are well informed. When this research began, it was going to show how political satirists consistently attacked any president in office. To clarify, it was meant to show that regardless of which President was being studied, the political satirists would always present material that opposed whatever the president was doing at the time to gain the favor of the audience. However, except in periods of extreme disapproval or during election times, this research shows that Jon Stewart, the researched satirist, almost exclusively talks about topics other than the President. As mentioned, the only exception to this is during election times where extreme bias can be consistently seen in favor of one candidate or another. It should be noted, however, that the study could be influenced by my own bias as I have been a viewer of these shows for many years and have developed opinions on both the satirists and Presidents. To account for this, all research materials are drawn from reputable, peer reviewed sources and directly from the shows.

Several qualified individuals have written material on the subject which contribute some of the core underlying ideas. Firstly, published in the Journal of Communication, “At Odds: Laughing and Thinking? The Appreciation, Processing, and Persuasiveness of Political Satire” elaborates on the theory that audiences tend to receive the ideas of political satire in a more positive manner when they agree with them. Mark Boukes, the author, does this through collecting data and statistics on how various variables affected the absorption rate of information included perceived funniness, age, and participants background on the topics (Boukes 721). Secondly, in her book A Conservative Walks into a Bar: The Politics of Political Humor, Professor Alison Dagnes presents the idea that bias plays an important role in giving political satire the modern “feel” it has to it. As well, she covers a range of topics important to this work such as why most of the prominent political satirists are liberal and how political satire becomes more appealing to audiences in times of national discontent (Dagnes 2-26). The third and fourth sources used in research, “Humor as a Double-Edged Sword: Four Functions of Humor in Communication” by J.C. Meyer and “Waiting for the Conservative Jon Stewart” by Oliver Morrison, support these observations and go into further detail as well as present their own statistics for these findings (Meyer and Morrison). Fifth, I draw from Matthew Binford’s dissertation Political Satire: Satirical News Affinity and its Relationship with Political Knowledge and Traditional News Media Consumption. In the dissertation he studies how the interest level of the audience toward a subject affects how well they will absorb and retain the information and messages presented (Binford). 

With the previous research in mind, these ideas are combined to search for and categorize phrases being used by major political satire shows during major events in the nation’s history. In particular, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart (later with Trevor Noah) is one of the most recognizable and long running of these shows and this is the basis for this project. Jon Stewart is known for being one of the most conservative leaning political satirists in prime-time talk shows, but despite this a case can still be made that he is primarily liberal or at the very minimum centrist. Two major themes are observed during the selected episodes of this show. One, except when the presidential approval rating is extremely low, the tone of the host remains has sarcastic, and he generally avoids insulting the president directly. Secondly, when the presidential elections occurred, the host became far more hostile to the party he did not support.

By selecting clips from episodes at key points in the presidential terms, the rate at which Jon Stewart (and after 2015, Trevor Noah) comments on the president can be documented. As shown in the research, at times where the President has a majority approval rating, Jon almost completely refrains from commenting on the work the president is doing (see Table 1). What this  shows is that although the approval rates strongly varied, in President Bush’s case as much as sixty-five percent, the rate at which the host attacks the President remained virtually unchanged. Using this data, we can extrapolate that even if the host is showing some bias through his tone or topic coverage, he remains consistent in calling out the mistakes of not just the opposing party, but with their own party as well. For reasons such as this, Morrison makes the case that Jon Stewart could almost be called a conservative host (Morrison). Using this idea, another author Boukes writes that when an audience agrees with or can relate to the topic being presented, they are more likely to retain the information (Boukes). By attacking both sides equally, it allows the inclusion of audience members from both the Democratic and Republican parties which makes the rhetoric more effective as a whole. In addition, this persistent lack of aggression allows viewers to more easily notice when the host is inserting their own bias. When this happens, the attacks begin to include personal opinions instead of facts which are easy to point out. By observing this shift in tone and accounting for the bias, it allows viewers to form their own opinions on the matter rather than assume the hosts as their own. In her book, Dagnes writes that some bias is ultimately necessary in political satire to make the hosts relatable to the audience. Without it, the creators of the satire would be creating a finished product that would resemble what traditional news outlets use (Dagnes xv). According to Binford, this entertainment value is what keeps the viewers listening and receptive to the ideas being presented (Binford). Most of the time, the hosts do well to be entertaining and present the facts with as little bias as possible, but this changes dramatically during election seasons.

While having a little bias in the show can be beneficial, during election times, Jon Stewart becomes much more aggressive and increases the rate at which he attacks both parties substantially. When the election season comes along, he tends to vouch for his own party and make sustained attacks on the opposition (see Table 2). As shown in the table, the rate that biased statements are given increases dramatically during times of election as opposed to the middle of a term. Because of this, the information being said during these times needs to be scrutinized by the audience before using it to form opinions. It seems that the host is trying to do what they think is best for the country as they are able to affect thousands of people and influence their votes. While not necessarily malicious in nature, when affecting large groups of people, bias must be checked. In addition to these observations, it can also be concluded that this trend will continue into future elections if the hosts remain in the field of political satire. 

One of the main arguments against the findings of my research is that it does not cover every episode of the show, instead it only covers a select few. As a result, the data is technically incomplete. With the time allotted, however, it was necessary to choose dates that correspond to important times to finish on time. More data can be added to this model later on and conclusions can be redrawn at that point, but with the data presented, I believe the ideas to be sound. Another possible argument against this research is that because of the nature of one person judging whether statements are biased, my own bias needs to be further accounted for. In an effort to address this, all materials used are obtained from peer-reviewed and first-hand sources. As well, the methods used are simple enough that almost anyone can check the results as long as they consider their own bias too. Finally, a change in data can be seen that I do not address and that is after Trevor Noah takes over hosting the show. I do this because although the data has been collected for the certain episodes, a distinct change in the tone of the show takes place after Jon Stewart stepped down. By bringing in his own unique style of comedy and satire, Trevor Noah changes the show entirely. The Daily Show goes from being a politically semi-balanced show to being almost exclusively liberal and more of an exposé on the wrongdoings of the Republican party. While this is not necessarily a bad thing, it does skew the data in a way that could give lead to false conclusions when related to the previous data. Because the other issues are addressed through careful research methods, they do not contract from the research as a whole. 

In conclusion, it is seen through the collected data that the political satirist Jon Stewart has historically remained rather non-partisan in when presenting his shows. The only shift in this behavior is at election times where he attacks candidates of the opposing party. From this, we can gather that he is at least making an effort to remove their bias as best they can, but still leave enough to catch the viewer’s attention and pass along their ideas. During the times where he is aggressive, he reverses this stance and inserts as much of his bias as possible in an effort to sway viewers. More data should be input into this study to make it complete, however, the data from these key points in the presidencies allow for a broad view of how satirists present their material at different times. 
