Talk:Comedians lampoon Bush at White House Correspondents' Dinner

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Frankie Roberto changed my title from "Colbert takes lampooning to new level" because his version "Lampooning for Bush..." is more "neutral and descriptive". But I think the story is more about how Stephen Colbert "stole the show". Some people may think that my title is evaluatory but then again take a look at this newsreport from last year's dinner: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/7693810/

So I will go ahead now and change the title.--Saidkassem 02:42, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

I still think the current title (Colbert steals show at annual Correspondents' Dinner) expresses both a value judgement (that Colbert delivered the best act) and doesn't additionally describe the lampooning of himself that Bush gave, which I think is also an important part of the story. Additionally, please check for double-redirects when renaming the page and try to update the main page if possible. I won't change it straight away, but can I suggest that we rename it back to something like Comedians lampoon Bush at White House Correspondents' Dinner? Frankie Roberto 10:58, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Frankie Roberto. The current title is possible inaccurate and doesn't cover the whole story. --Chiacomo ^(talk) 13:49, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

From reading the headline alone, I am distrustful of the article's credibility...this sort of headline would be much more at home in front of a reflective op-ed, not a news article

The headline is true. there is nothing wrong with it and its not misleading. Please state your reason for tagging this article? Jason Safoutin 18:36, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

What if I said that your proposed headline embeds just as much opinion about the reality of that event as mine? Your headline states "Comedians lampoon Bush..", doesn't this conflate the Steve Bridges with the Colbert act, as if both acts carried the same implications in society? No, I think a more accurate story makes a distinction between the Bridges and the Colbert act, AND, an accurate headline needs to convey that something audacious and unprecedented occurred that night (Steve Bridges = friendly jabs Colbert= hostile, unwelcomed jabs TO HIS FACE). To downplay the audaciousness of Colbert's act would be to sidestep attention away from a major reality of that night (Bush's red face, nervous laughter, hostile reception, Laura Bush not shaking his hand, AND mainstream media sidestepping the Colbert act all together). Here is a good critique of the mainstream media's bawdlerization of what actually occurred: http://daoureport.salon.com/

--Saidkassem 18:45, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

• It is not a constructive contribution to the wiki to re-tag an article when you do not have an alternative title for the article. Please offer some suggestions instead of just giving vague concerns that it does not have "balance". NPOV != Balance. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 18:52, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

My alternative proposal has been posted to this discussion thread for at least 12 hours. I was the author of the originating title until it was changed by Frankie Roberto. It should be clear that I am actively proposing "Colbert steals show at White House Correspondents' Dinner". In my opinion, the Bridges act has been overblown and, while that is a value, it is journalistic discretion to assess the proportionality of each act. journalists do it all the time. the new york times did it yesterday when they decided to elide the Colbert act all together. --Saidkassem 18:59, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

• Your alternative is not acceptable because it does not meet the very policy you are using to block publication of this article. Wikinews cannot conclude that Colbert "steals the show" without having a POV. Check here, we're not allowed to have one - even in an attempt to balance what the mainstream media have reported. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 19:06, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

and by the way there is journalistic precedence for the spirit of my headline from the Editor & Publisher-- "Colbert Lampoons Bush at White House Correspondents Dinner -- President Not Amused?"--Saidkassem 19:05, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

How many of the people that voiced objection to the totle suggested by Saidkassem have actually watched the different routines? --vonbergm 20:53, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

The argument that other publications have used headlines like 'Colbert steals show' can't be used to justify it here, as Wikinews has a far stricter policy of neutrality. Whilst I might personally have some agreement with the view that the Colbert act was harsher and more significant than the double-Bush act, this is something that needs to be described in the article rather than the headline. As the headlines can be read out of context, there's much more of a requirement for them to be descriptive and neutral, IMO. The current title, Comedians lampoon Bush at White House Correspondents' Dinner is clear and adequately descriptive, I think. In my understanding at least, 'lampoon' is a fairly descriptive and non-judgemental word. The article itself also seems to be NPOV fairly well, so I'd vote for removing the tag. Frankie Roberto 21:56, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

My problem with your proposed headline is that "Comedians lampoon" suggests equality between both the Bridges and Colbert acts. It suffers not from bias, but from innacuracy. The dual-Bush act was self-lampooning, the other was sharp mockery from an outsider. One elicited hearty laughter, the other a much colder reception. there were many camera shots of the audience reaction. Given this crucial distinction, I propose a headline that reflects this complexity. proposed headline: "For Bush, lampooning leads to mockery at White House Correspondents' Dinner"

I can see your point, but I think that the difference between the two acts can adequately be explained in the article. It's difficult to get such a complex statement into the headline. To me, 'Comedians lampoon Bush' doesn't suggest equality between the two acts.

I'd happily support a followup article looking only at the Colbert act and the reaction to it (from both politicians and the press) by the way. Frankie Roberto 10:34, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

--Saidkassem 02:59, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

Saidkassem, I agree that with your assertion that Colbert's act was by any measure the news event of the dinner. However, it will take a long discussion to make a strong enough point to make the headline reflect this and imho not worth the trouble. While it is in some ways regrettable that a simple observation about the inequality of the acts -- which should be part of the reporting -- is opposed by users on the grounds that it is not "neutral" (while reporting unequal acts as equal supposingly is "neutral"), the resulting bias in the headline is a relatively small price to pay on a collaborative news site. Unless Frankie Roberto changes his mind on the assertion that "descriptive and neutral" means that one has to give all side equal weight even if they are in fact not equal, I recommend that at this point you just let it slide and move the article to publish. --vonbergm 05:09, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

agreed. --Saidkassem 16:13, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

I've seen this event reported so many times, yet I have been in the dark about the significance of the event until just yesterday. How could this be? Well, all the headlines say "Comedians..." and I'm like: duh! That's what happens at a WH correspondant's dinner. It's mocking humor - but it's usually self-mockery and it's never a jab. So for so long I was curious as to why anyone would ever publish such an unremarkable event and call it "news". There is certainly nothing "new" about it.

The point of a news article is to be informative, and the point of the headline is to pack the main information in the article into a very small space. To tell you what is "new", specifically what "new" thing the article is about. I'm assuming nobody here wrote an article about business as usual at the WHCD. And I can't find any news articles on this site about business as usual at the WHCD, which begs the question: "Why do we have an article title about business as usual at the WHCD?" The title needs to convey to the reader that this is not business as usual. "Comedians lampoon Bush at White House Correspondents' Dinner" does not.

Regarding suggesting equality, Frankie: value is communicated by proportion. "How much text does it's value merit?" "Comedians" gives each comedian the same amount of text, and therefore values them equally. You said before that "I still think the current title (Colbert steals show at annual Correspondents' Dinner) expresses both a value judgement..." The very act of writting expresses a value judgement: when we write, we are saying that what we are writting about has value. The judgement is not that colbert was the best act, but that colbert's actions merit text. We have all already accepted that value judgement, as we all accepted this article about colbert's actions being published. So why is this judgement all the sudden absent in a denser medium, which is supposed to be a faithfully compressed version of this article? Kevin Baas^talk 22:18, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Hi Kevin - thanks for joining in the debate. In some ways I agree with your argument that "the very act of writting expresses a value judgement", but we have a committment on Wikinews to comply with the Neutral point of view policy, which says that we should characterize events and dispute rather than express an opinion. In my view, suggesting that someone 'steals the show' expresses an opinion that they were the 'best' act, which is opinion. Whereas 'comedians lampoon bush' describes multiple comedians making jokes satirising and criticising Bush. There's an argument that 'lampoon' is too mild a word and thus less accurate than it could be (I'm not sure on this, it's not a word that occurs very frequently in British english).

For me, I thought both the Colbert act and the double-Bush act were equally newsworthy. Whilst you suggest that the WHCA dinner always features jokes targetting the president, this isn't something that's particularly well known internationally (I'd never even heard of it), and the fact that George Bush was able to take part in an act that publically mocked his own persona was certainly big and interesting news internationally, even if it's perhaps more well known in the States that Bush is able to mock himself.

I repeat again my argument that the discussion of the content and impact of the Colbert act should happen within the article itself - it's always tricky to describe a complex event adequately in a headline, and the nature of the NPOV policy on Wikinews tends to lead to fairly dry headlines, with the main 'why is this news significant' explanatory text in the body of the article. As it stands, I don't think the Colbert act is particularly well described in the article (mostly just one long quote), and so I'd welcome some more text about this (and even a followup article), which I think would be more constructive than continually discussing the headline. Does that sound like a way forward? Frankie Roberto 23:24, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

I'll take the main point of your argument to be: this is an international medium, and because of the difference in information that people from different countries have, what represents "new" information is likewise different. Thus the newsworthiness differs. And to solve that problem, we judge novelty by international measures. by that logic, and accepting your reasonable premise that it is not common knowledge that WH correspondent's dinners are traditionally that way, the title should be "comedians". However, seeing as though this tradition goes way back, i would think it should more properly be an encyclopdia article than a news article.

I don't quite follow here. I think that, from an international perspective, both the Colbert act and the double-Bush act were newsworthy, and so it was right to include both events in the story. Frankie Roberto 22:02, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Though I do agree that the article could benefit from more coverage on the colbert stuff, on principle, I am against modifying an article after it's been published.

A follow-up article could have looked at this more in depth, but perhaps it's a bit late now. Frankie Roberto 22:02, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

For what it's worth, Stephen Colbert was way over the line. He radically broke from a tradition that goes way back. What he did was not comedy. What he did was serious, and mercilessly so. he crashed the party, so to speak. "colbert crashes white house party" might be an accurate title (where it appropriate) That's the news to the political savvy in america. Kevin Baas^talk 02:07, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

That's interesting comment, and something the article could have perhaps made clearer.

I noticed this edit summary by you: "Colbert takes White House lampooning to new levels at Correpondents' Dinner moved to Lampooning for Bush at Correpondents' Dinner: move to more netural, descriptive title." other things aside, more descriptive!? you can't be serious! it's blatently obvious that there's less information in the new title. in the new title we know that:

1. Bush was "lampooned for". (for?)
2. It was at a dinner for correspondents

With the old title we know that:

1. White house officials were lampooned.
2. It was at a dinner for correspondents.
3. Colbert was one of the lampooners
4. he went beyond the established norm
5. more so than has ever been done before.

I'm assuming good faith, but i can find no reasonable explanation for that edit summary other than it was intentionally misleading, so perhaps you want to provide one?

and i certainly don't see any pov or value judgements in that title. nowhere does it state or imply that colbert taking WH lampooning to unprecedented levels is either good or bad. given that, I don't see how your new title was any more or less neutral, except insofar as, because significat information was redacted, it may have become less neutral. Kevin Baas^talk 02:27, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

I thought that the second title ('Lampooning for Bush...') was more descriptive because it described both the double-Bush act and the Colbert act, whereas the previous title only mentioned the Colbert act. I thought it was more neutral as, in my understanding of the phrase, x takes x to new levels implies the opinion that someone has done something better than it's been done before. Whilst I'd agree that this is only slightly non-neutral, and perhaps justified in the context, I took the view that the new title was more easily descriptive and neutral. Headline/title writing is tricky at the best of times, and the NPOV policy of Wikinews can make it even more controversial, so often I think we just have to pick a fairly bland descriptive title and explain the significants of the story in the main body text. Sorry if you think we got it wrong this time. Frankie Roberto 22:02, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

I hear your reasoning. Yes, it is tricky. I'm an computer programmer and have studied a lot of information theory. The title you switched it to informed the reader about neither the colbert act nor the double-bush act. you replaced a specific phrase with a more general one. whenever that is done, information is lost. for instance, replacing "2" with "somewhere in between 1 and 10" is less informative. Likewise "2 is one of the numbers" is more information than "the numbers are all between 1 and 100", esp. when there are only 2 numbers in a very large set (set of comedians). more general is less informative, and therefore less descriptive. regarding neutrality, "best" is the wrong word in this case. in a certain respect he was the worst act: he got the least laughter. i speculate that laughter was not his goal. x takes x to new levels does not imply the opinion that someone has done something better than it's been done before, because it does not imply the value metric "good" or "bad". it states that it has been done more extremely than has been done before. done what more extremely? thanks to the rules of syntax, the next word informs the reader of that: lampooning. he lampooned more, in quantity or quality. but the word lampoon is off. it's second definition: "A light, good-humored satire" completely misses the point. the point is - from an politically aware ameri-centric standpoint - that his act was anything but light and good-humored, quite unlike the double-bush act (which by that logic shouldn't be lumped together into the same category), and all acts at all WHCD in since the tradition began. The significance of the event to me, and many people in america (as evidenced by the unusual amount of attention it's gotten on the internet), is that "the main act of the WHCD, Colbert, attacks the present w/unrelenting hard, ascerbic sarcasm, contrary to the tradition of the event to lighten the atmosphere with light, good-humored satire". This is not a value judgement of how "good" or "bad" the act was. This is making the president of the most powerful country so mad at you that he want to punch you in the face, in front of the world, and getting away with it, and that is quite different from lampooning. it would be a value judgement if we were to say that to make the president mad and all that is either good or bad. and nowhere do we say that he did this better than anybody else - in fact, in this specifc case, that is absurd - because nobody else has every done this at a WHCD ever. Kevin Baas^talk 23:07, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Interesting - so maybe he wasn't lampooning at all but doing something different. Maybe 'Colbert attacks Bush at WHCA dinner' might have been a good title. I agree my title was more general and less specific than anything like that - my main motivation was wanting to include the double-Bush act within it. Perhaps they could have done with being separate articles? Anyhow, I'm going to move on now - lots of political news to cover here in the UK... Frankie Roberto 14:40, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

"more interesting details"

More interesting details are available here [1]

Transcript

It would be good if we could include a few more quotes, and ones that differ from the same old quotes being used from the AP wire copy. Are there transcripts of the Double-Bush and Colbert routines anywhere? Frankie Roberto 11:02, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

colbert's speach (not the sketch) via boingboing --w:User:Marc Lacoste 12:58, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

Cleaned up transcripts and link to the video of Colbert's speach: [2] --vonbergm 20:38, 1 May 2006 (UTC)

Why is this tagged NPOV?

Why is this article tagged NPOV? The current title appears to be very neutral -- is there something else I'm missing? --Chiacomo ^(talk) 02:31, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

I think it's the closing. The whole "spreading like wildfire" and "most popular downloads" thing is a bit non-neutral, at least without some sort of facts or stats to back it up. Rob T Firefly 16:14, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

That was an addition after I removed the tag, the actual link to the video and transcript could be in a References section. The video link should be to the entire program, not just the Colbert bit. --Brian McNeil / ^talk 16:31, 2 May 2006 (UTC)

Most of the video links I've seen around are just to the Colbert bit. I have yet to see any links to the full hour and a half that C-SPAN are currently selling. If you've got one, that'd be great. --BenM 20:24, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Well, there is the free low-quality version on the cspan website. [rtsp://video.c-span.org/60days/wh042906_dinner.rm?mode=compact] But it is a drag to watch. --vonbergm 21:34, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

I guess Colbert did the best I don't know why. I'll try to seach for a website on Google. FellowWikiNews 23:17, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

Colbert was out-of-bounds. That's why it's circulating. Not because his act was the best or the worst, but because he was a maverick. His was not light, good-humored satire. He said what a lot of people have been feeling for a long time in a cogent, eloquent way, in front of a very large audience, when he wasn't supposed to. That's why it's being circulated so much. A lot of ppl feel very vindicated by it. Kevin Baas^talk 23:21, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

Category and link

{{edit protected}} Please add this article to [[Category:White House]] and localize the link for George Bush (maybe by including his middle initial). Thank you. Green Giant (talk) 23:38, 1 November 2015 (UTC)

added Category:White House (United States) and {{w}}ized. --Pi zero (talk) 15:32, 4 November 2015 (UTC)