Frank

Having professor Ted the law guy visit our class today made me consider the Daily Show. I was surprised he didn't mention Jon Stewart when he was talking about satire.
I think that he is probably right that satire does offer legal protection against cases of libel. He said that as long as the audience can clearly tell it's satire, then the satirist will not have to worry about libel. This left me thinking about the Daily Show because it is well known that many people get their news from Jon Stewart. The producers of the show undoubtedly know this also. So what if Jon Stewart put out a satirical piece portraying Dick Cheney as a sadomasochist who enjoys wearing leather underwear, whipping subordinates and getting whipped by large men dressed like female British nannies. The visual alone screams absurdity as it is obviously a copy and paste of doctored photos. Then Jon Stewart says right before the commercial break, "But seriously, Dick Cheney DOES have a life sized safe in his office, full of leather underwear and whips."
Any one who watches Jon Stewart knows that there are facts interspersed with the absurd satire. That's why it's where so many people access the news. They pick up on those facts, separate them from the satire and they walk away feeling like they are informed citizens. But what if they don't successfully separate the facts from the satire?
I sometimes have difficulty separating the facts from the satire and have gone to the Internet after watching the Daily Show on numerous occasions to see if a claim made there was fact. The most recent, but nowhere near the most significant, example was to see if Rob Riggle was actually in Iraq.
What if Dick Cheney in the previous example, or any one else the Daily Show satirizes, does some research and finds out that the a large portion of the audience walked away thinking a satirical statement was a fact? Would Jon Stewart still be able to claim satire as protection from libel?