Them. The former report the news. The latter provide the edge. Satire has a way of cutting to the core of issues. Deflating egos, which is why leaders given to depock rahsy. In this electronic age there has been a shift. With news outlets, 24 hour channels, more sat irists turn attention to the news media, because like other institutions its another form of power that needs to be held to account. In this 3part special we look at the role that sat irists play in media, and the consequences that can have for the satirist, which, like the points they make can be serious indeed. They are the traditional voices of authority. Not asking the question of whether you overrule. The faces of the news, pervezers of journalism. The onventional mainstream journalists dont hold the monopoly on the news any more. The sat irists are telling it like it is. From his world news headquarters in new york, late night Current Affairs comic jon stewart, and in cairo, egyptian history with a show, spanish tv comic hosts a show from studios in madrid. And then theres the comedy vanguard advancing online, media animation based in taiwan, in australia, and in thailand shallow news indepth, which kind of says it all. Satire is diverting the message, showing the hypocrisy of somebody saying something today when you know that they said Something Different yesterday. Satire is one of the most effective ways of communicating those discrepancies. In egypt that person got his start online as hundreds of thousands of protesters converged on Tahrir Square he took to the web adding a comeed lick flavour to the story. He was so popular he made it to mainstream media. He did land in court by the Mohamed Mursi government. When it became obvious that interim government run by general abdul fatah alsisi would be elected, he pulled the plug on the show and hasnt been seen on air since. He was used as a tool to make fun of the muslim brotherhood, and the post president Mohamed Mursi. That was needed at the time. Once his function was performed and his role ended, okay, now we dont want him to criticize the military or president abdul fatah alsisi. The fact that he was willing to make jokes about abdul fatah alsisi, the cult of personality, the truffles, abdul fatah alsisis face, the widespread almost cultish support for a military leader. This was quite bold, bowler than some on the left who were criticizing him were willing to give him credit for. Whatever you do, people accuse him of a double standard. Everyone has their own line, and you as a satirist have not crossed. I said forget it, we forget the lines, if we can, its scary, and we try to cross over them. He belonged to a growing number of sat irists, many inspired by jon stewart in the u. S. , who was not the first, but one of the best known to pose as a satirist. With the growth of the television industry, particularly 24 hours, he started to turn his sights on the channels. They provided him with material. News channels struggled to fill air time and slow news days. It was before the internet came along destroying what was left of the news model. 24 hour news channels have all the air time to fill. There were less journalism, fewer investigations and more talks from host. You are an unbelievably stupid man. Belligerent pundits and reporters called on for updates, even if theres no news to report. We think therell be some sort of announcement in the next few minutes, whatever that is. Leaving sat irists with plenty to say. In a desperate attempt to fill 24 hours of programme here is [ beeping ] that happened somewhere. The 24 hour news cycle paved the way for sat irists making days of the news. You have news anchors on c. N. N. And others. You are a stripper or just a young hotty. When you fill up 24 hours of air time you say particular stuff. I dont know how Something Like that qualifies as a question on national tv. Yoouston and stewart owe their careers and popularity to the break up of the old media paradigm. Cable television was aching for content and would put anything on, because they had so much space when stewart was able to come onto the daily show. Yusep came on to youtube, and both allowed them to g around the gatekeepers of the main stream news keeper. They were doing something familiar to an american audience, something egyptian audiences have not seen which is a satirist telling hard truths, cutting up the news and replaying it for us to laugh at. By that same token, he was serving as a risk taker. Egypt didnt have that. Risk is part of the repertoire. Jonathan writes under a pen name. He was sued by president jacob zuma, for a cartoon that shows him ready to rape lady justice. It was called a metaphor. The president said it was humiliating and degrading. The insinuation is that it was a reference to rape charges that he had been acquitted of years before. Within a short while he sued. That case went on for four years and came close to going to court. It was a day or two before it was due in court. That he dropped it. The reason he dropped it, they put out a statement saying he was doing it for the benefit of freedom of expression. Sure, we may say that this circumstance of drawing or making a joke about rape could be not so family friendly. In these circumstances, where you have a president who has been accused of a variety of things, including actual rape charms, thats when a rape charges, thats when a cartoonist can do what a journalist cant. Those that hold power fear sat irists more than journalists, sat irists play by a different set of rules. They are unconstrained. They have no need to be objective and have no requirement to strike a balance when it comes to cartoons and news casts. Governments know at the end of the day, that although satire is funny and humorous, its effective and in some cases they have huge followings, people listen to them and are affected by what they are saying. A challenge for a government is how to respond to that. In that freer society, sat ear is a safety valve. For the government to let it happen, allows them to exist in a way that prommel gaits their power. When governments overreact to satire, theres a problem. We have all seen someone that doesnt take a joke well. Start with one issue education. Gun control. The gap between rich and poor. Job creation. Climate change. Tax policy. The economy. Iran. Healthcare. Ad guests on all sides of the debate. This is a right we should all have. Its just the way it is. Theres something seriously wrong. Theres been acrimony. The conservative ideal. Its an urgent need. And a host willing to ask the tough questions how do you explain it to yourself . And youll get. The inside story ray suarez hosts inside story weekdays at 5 eastern only on Al Jazeera America im joie chen, im the host of america tonight, were revolutionary because were going back to doing best of storytelling. We have an ouportunity to really reach out and really talk to voices that we havent heard before. I think Al Jazeera America is a watershed moment for american journalism we have reached a stage where a satirical show is a primary source of information. People find out about things because of us. What does this tell you about the state of the news. It says that news is more and more bennal. We are reeling interest a wave of indignation in spain, not just for what is happening, but the way it is tole. You use humour, giving you a poetic licence which traditional journalism doesnt grant. We have been told so much by the powers that be, that journalists slid through the tracks creating their own way of life. When spaniards sit to watch the evening news, theres plenty of channels nationwide to choose from. States, and private broadcasters, many find it hard to take news from any of them at face value. Theyd rather watch a comedian turn pseudonews anchor instead. The interval struck a coward satire with substance. Headlines, confronting power, asking the right questions. Translation we are surprised by the success of the show, its a sign of lowquality news in the country. The polish journalists once said that journalism is everything that irritates pow, and that all the rest is propaganda, we are in the propaganda phase. On this show we are committed to denouncing it. Today theres no role investigative journalism, and we dont get to the bottom of big stories like corruption, the way we should. Investigative journalism takes time and costs money. News editors these days dont have the budget. Problems are not just economic. Main stream journalists have reasons for going light on stories of corruption. When the government came to power in 2011, a purge of stateowned tv followed. Stateowned journalists were fired, friendlier ones were hired. This year three editors of the top spanish dailies were shown the door. The move coming after two papers exposed one of the biggest corruption scandals history. The crisis in the media drove viewers to news and analysis. Theres 2. 5 Million Viewers daily. Despite the ratings, many say the show is one joke away from being offair. At a time when spains public has lost a lot of faith, its the medias duty to hold the institutions to account. The same Mainstream Press sees that the reliable watchdog is a challenge. The crisis extends all the way to their doorstep. So the job of taking critical distance fell on satire. Mongolia is a magazine set up by disaffected journalists. Its been drawing in readers. Letters to the editor, and eyecatching front pages, taking aid at the revered institutions. We werent sure whether the format would work. It was one of the only parts left to beexplored, a system that hasnt managed a true transition to democracy. Cultural d. N. A. Is not. We said okay, lets force the change through humour and doing serious journalism. Every month the magazine sets aside a few copies to send to politicians, bankers, kings, editors and corporate types. The royal house receives a copy, adorning it with post it not on where to find jokes about them. Earlier this year, when the Kings Daughter faced corruption charges, sa special magazine was produced. We published another magazine in which kristina showed us her new home, a prison cell. We poked fun at organizations that offer nothing, that are out of touch. Like all good satire, mongolia has serious intent. Journalism can hit hard. Politicians how they profited by the privatisation of stateowned companies, spains involvement in the iraq war, and to the surprise of backers, circulation reached 40,000. The magazine makes enough money to pay regular salaries to staff. And all that with no advertising revenue. We are all proving that with little you can achieve a lot. And perhaps one of the biggest mistakes is to allow the media to grow so much that they turn to institutions that need huge resources and this makes them slow machines. We are following those that create focus points that generate information that is more direct, effective, independent. More real. Because in times of financial crisis, spaniards are struggling to take the main stream news seriously. They have gone booking for the truth elsewhere. In parody, and therein lies the irony. They have been known to insight protest, rally the masses and bring down dictators. The editorial cartoon, the pointing of a political picture in broad brush stroke can be funny, but the subject matter often is not. The political cartoon is an immediate opinion. You have to wade through thousands of words. They say a picture is worth 1,000 words. Im not sure if that is true. That is the thing that a cartoon can hit you snack in the eye like that. When you open the paper, there it is. Its about visualising, getting the grips with the flood of imagery that we get more and more these days. I start here and think about what has been going on, what i hear on the news. Its down to me to decide, and they are trying to think of a way to do a cartoon around it. Meet the Guardian Steve bell. And the counterpart gerald stark combined. The two sat irists face 100 years of cartoons. Using the power of the pen to expose the politicians and the politics of the day. Are they on the same page . Not literally. They are often on the same topic. I work on the sunday times, its once a week. I only really have one crack a week at where steve has three or four goes at something. He does a lot more work than me and puts in a lot more hours. He has more of a pallet to work from at the end of the week. Many of the ideas have been done by my compatriots. By the time it gets to thursday or friday, i should have something bubbling away. When the idea comes to me, i plunge it on to the paver. He stands at the table. We cant think about it. Everything i do is like that. Its more tight. Tightly controlled. Im a comic. Essentially they are comics. The bigger cartoons are bigger frame of a comic strip. Theres a different aesthetic going on. I have far more slots. I have eight a week, he has one. Drawing cartoons and paper, its a simply process. Id do it, send it in and it goes to the paper. If i use too many bad words or liable. An apology, a rap on the knuckles may be the only repercussion in some countries, but in others cartoons can be explosive. You dont need to be the one drawing them. Two libyan politicians faced the Death Penalty using the cartoon, deemed insulting to islam. The sentences were commuted. Both fined. Back in august 2011, syrian cartoonists didnt get off lightly. He was victimized, an attack that was vicious and symbolic. His hands broken, the pen silenced. Other cartoonists, even those not working in oppressive circumstances received death threats, lawsuits, gaoled sentences. People in positions of privilege understand and fear the potent mix of power and fund ditry flowing from the cartoonists pen. You can make a world leader look ridiculous. Its more powerful to use humour to bring them down and show them with dripping fangs of blood. It be littles them more. To be laughed at. If you think the person is a tyrant, its the fear in you, they are still powerful. If you make them look like a buffoon, it evaporates. Sat earicly Holding Power to account has a lot of history. British newspaper cartooning is the preserve of a group of men. Surrounded by paint brushes and pen pots rather than laptops and pen pots. When they put down their pence, will there be cartoonists waiting to pick up where they let off. Its weevered, obscure and rare. Not many want to do it. Theres good cartoonists coming outside. Lets hope therell be newspapers for them to work in. It probably is threatening cartoonists. They are fighting against headlines, advertisements, brilliant photographs. Its my job really to capture the rater as he turns the major and arrest their attention and make their point as quickly as they can. Its a tail whereby newspapers die. Thats overplayed. Therell be a need to have something in their hand to look through, read, laugh at and pour over, which you cant do with a screen, with a tablet. That is one thing, the one thing that newspapers have over other media. The cartoon, that in a single imaging, and a few words, it can say it all. Audiences are intelligent and they know that their needs are not being met by american tv news today. Entire media culture is driven by something thats very very fast. There has been a lack of fact based, in depth, serious journalism, and we fill that void. There is a huge opportunity for Al Jazeera America to change the way people look at news. We just dont parachute in on a story. Quickly talk to a couple of experts and leave. One producer may spend 3 or 4 months, digging into a single story. At al jazeera, there are resources to alow us as journalists to go in depth and produce the kind of films. The people that you dont see anywhere else on television. We intend to reach out to the people who arent being heard. We wanna see the people who are actually effected by the news of the day. Its Digging Deeper its asking that second, that third question, finding that person no one spoken to yet. You cant tell the stories of the people if you dont get their voices out there, and Al Jazeera America is doing just that. The thing about online satire is that although it can find its way to you, you usually have to fight it and not all of it is good. On sample of our favorites. We mentioned rap news earlier produced by juice media in australia, their inhouse anchor man Robert Foster makes saleients points on politics and media but almost almost rhyme. Next media based in taiwan that produces cgi animated videos based upon contemporary news stories, usually in mad darin and now japanese we have used mark, a San Francisco cartoonist animation. He gave up print for moving images and was awarded a pull pittser surprise. Across the arab world. And racking up millions of views. We will see you next time at the listening post. Taking the fight to alshabab, forces from the funnion try to cut the armed supply routes. Welcome to al jazeera, im darren jordon, also coming up, heavy battles between the syrian kurds at the town of kobani. Dilma rousseff wins the first round of the brazilian elections, but fails to secure an outright majority. Dwindling numbers continue in hong kong, despi