In recent years, the US fake news program The Daily Show with Jon Stewart has become a surprisingly important source of information, conversation, and commentary about public affairs. Perhaps more surprisingly, so-called 'fake news' is now a truly global phenomenon, with various forms of news parody and political satire programming appearing throughout the world. This collection of innovative chapters takes a close and critical look at global news parody from a wide range of countries including the USA and the UK, Italy and France, Hungary and Romania, Israel and Palestine, Iran and India,...

With increasing numbers of people tuning out the nightly news and media consumption falling, late-night comedians have become some of the most important newscasters in the country. From Cronkite to Colbert explains why. It examines a historical path that begins at the height of the network age with Walter Cronkite and Edward R. Murrow--when the evening news was considered the authoritative record of the day's events and forged our assumptions about what "the news" is, or should be. The book then winds its way through the breakdown of the paradigm of "real" news and into its reinvention in the...