Fake journalism, real consequences

Alex Johnson Reporter • Profile

As a matter of fact, Andy Tomko did know what he was letting himself in for, thank you very much.

It’s always the first question people ask when they see someone being more or less made fun of on “The Daily Show With Jon Stewart”: Didn’t they know it’s a joke?

Well, yes, usually.

“Mind you, I had seen ‘The Daily Show’ before, and I realized that it’s tongue-in-cheek and that if you do choose to participate, you’re taking a risk of looking extremely foolish,” said Tomko, a motivational speaker from East Grand Rapids, Mich., who talks to young people about transcending bullying.

But “I felt strongly enough about my stance on bullying, and I was willing to take that risk of looking foolish in the hopes of getting my perspective out that bullying is a harmful thing,” he said.

“The Daily Show” flew Tomko to New York and sat him down with “correspondent” Samantha Bee, who did her best to bait him into, well, acting like a bully. He parried and kept his cool. This was in June.

The response to his appearance since then has mainly been positive, but oddly muted. Other than “some e-mails congratulating me for having the chutzpah to go on and voice my opinion,” nothing happened.

“Surprisingly, it brought me absolutely no work,” he said this week. “It’s a national television show, quite popular. I thought that I would certainly get more marketing value out of it than I did.”

Suffering for her art
Andy Tomko was one of the lucky ones. Most times, a “Daily Show” report gets its laughs and moves on. But sometimes, there are consequences when an ordinary person is plucked from relative obscurity and turned into a piñata on national TV.

Consider the case of Susan Buzzi, a former arts administrator in Fort Lauderdale, Fla. The Broward County Art Guild fired her after she appeared in a field report by Ed Helms, who made the trip down from New York to lampoon an exhibit Buzzi put together on politically controversial art.

Buzzi’s part in the piece was small — Helms ended up casting it as a rhetorical battle between two rival artists. Mainly, she’s shown walking away from him in frustration. Still, a week after the piece aired in July, the Art Guild’s board voted in secret session to dismiss her as executive director.

The board gave no explanation for its action, but Buzzi told The Miami Herald at the time that board members told her they were unhappy with the report. An artist featured in the report said the board’s action gave the appearance of censorship.

Buzzi — who couldn’t be tracked down for comment this week — is probably the most obviously damaged victim of the “Daily Show” effect. She did, after all, lose her job and now works as a commercial photographer.

More often, the hit is to the reputation of whoever’s being spoofed. One national news outlet (OK, it was us) even abandoned a report it was preparing on an evangelical Christian group that wants to take over South Carolina, after a “Daily Show” report turned the organization, for a while, at least, into an object of ridicule.

Like Tomko, the folks at Christian Exodus knew what they were getting into, and they gave Helms (again) a run for his money.

Steve Albani, vice president of Comedy Central, which airs the program, acknowledged that it’s a bigger problem than ever to find subjects who haven’t heard of the show and aren’t in on the joke. Unfortunately, everyday folks like you aren’t highly trained comedic technicians, so the show has to labor harder and longer to work around the sometimes painful attempts by its subjects to play along.

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