Politics
Late Night Calls a Lid: Study Finds 97% of Jokes Are About Trump, Only 3% About Biden
They practically ignore Biden, as if it were an industry-wide mandate to do so from the DNC itself.
Undergoing the kind of painful research project we wouldn’t wish on our worst enemies, one George Mason University media researcher watched a ton of late night material from two major networks and recorded exactly how many jokes were directed at President Trump versus how many were directed at former Vice President Joe Biden.
To no one’s surprise, the study found that Trump was mocked by network late night comedians far more than his 2020 presidential opponent, though looking at the numbers is still surreal. According to Robert Lichter, a researcher at GMU’s Center for Media and Public Affairs, Trump was 97 percent of Jimmy Fallon and Stephen Colbert’s mockery, while Biden only got three precent.
Talk about handling the worst presidential candidate in U.S. history with kid gloves. They practically ignore Biden, as if it were an industry-wide mandate to do so from the DNC itself. (It probably is.)
The study, headed by Lichter, consisted of watching and tallying the political jokes aimed at both presidential candidates from NBC’s The Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon and CBS’ The Late Show with Stephen Colbert for the month of September 2020.