And a comedian shall show journalists the way

Abstract

Purpose

To discuss the time when an overuse of a marketing perspective for a product is detrimental to the best interests of society. In this case, using marketing to drive journalistic decision results in a poorly informed electorate in which a comedy program of admitted fake news provides more insight into the truth of politicians' statements than do actual television news shows.

Design/methodology/approach

The starting‐point is the fake news program on a comedy network, whose show host himself generated news during the election season with confrontations and criticisms of journalists who failed to do their reporting job.

Findings

The journalists, according to Stewart, have come to serve theater and the illusion of objectivity instead of the truth. When marketing drives journalism decisions, the public loses.

Practical implications

This abuse and misuse of marketing for news programming decisions lower the credibility of all news and information, and the dedicated journalists in the professions should take Jon Stewart's criticisms as a call to action. People from the USA need to be better informed about the world instead of having their own continued biases and misperceptions fed by pundits. At worst, this is a misleading selling of news as a commodity instead of informing the public.

Originality/value

Jon Stewart was right when he said to the NCC pundits, “You're killing us.” Fake news should not be more information‐driven than the news networks.

Citation

Rotfeld, H.J. (2005), "And a comedian shall show journalists the way", Journal of Consumer Marketing, Vol. 22 No. 3, pp. 119-120. https://doi.org/10.1108/07363760510600312