Last Week’s News Comedically; Information Overload, Flood The Zone, & Key Messages

News Covering: March 14, 2025 – March 20, 2025

This week we face off with I.C.E., tariffs, Elon Musk’s continued fall from grace, and Democrats not really doing anything. This week was additionally interesting as we didn’t see our usual Stephen Colbert and Seth Meyers as they were both off. So, I kept it a little shorter by adding in the coverage from the Daily Show’s host this week: Jordan Klepper.

So, if you’re missing some of our favourites, I highly recommend taking a look at last week’s videos with Stephen Colbert and Gary Oldman. If you’re looking for something more news related for the week, might I suggest John Stewart’s interview with Senator Chris Murphy.

Now I think at this point we can all agree that I like a vast number of theories and topics and love to pull them all together in a nice little bow, and gift it to you on a little platter, or at least that’s what I try to do anyways. So today, I’m talking about some theories and concepts that have crossed my mind over this past week, that relate to what’s been going on politically, and in the media.

This time, I’m pulling from organizational communication rather than media studies, although I will admit there are some media studies theories surrounding this topic, as well as some propaganda theories, I’m just not entirely well versed enough to talk about them in great detail right now. Today the concept I want to discuss is information overload. Now from what I remember, I was first introduced to this topic in Introduction to Organizational Communication with Professor Jenepher Lennox Terrion in my first year. I still have the textbook from her class, and reference it often, as I am doing right now (thanks professor!). The idea of information overload, is that we are in a constant state of it, and at the end of the day, if we are not actively listening our ability to absorb information isn’t particularly effective (Pg 140-141, Communication in Everyday Life by Sherry Devereaux Ferguson and Jenepher Lennox Terrion). When we looked at this topic back in 2016, we talked about it in the sense of listening, and how to listen, and that multi-tasking was distracting, and had a rather negative impact on our ability to properly and fully absorb information. Think about a time you had a conversation with someone and had to ask them to repeat what they said, or they had to ask you what you said, it could be that they hadn’t heard you properly, or perhaps they (or you!) were distracted by something else, could be a phone, a book, a bird outside, really anything other than the person speaking in front of you. That’s what we mean when we talk about information overload, there’s simply too much going on, and our attention is split.

Now in a broader sense, we know that we are bombarded with news and information at an alarming rate these days, having such a strong and quick access to our phones and the internet, and a 24-hour news cycle serviced by countless providers. There’s so much available, and quite frankly, so much going on, that it’s hard to keep track of it all every day.

What I want to discuss when it comes to information overload, is the idea of information overload being used as a tactic by the Trump administration to distract and confuse political opponents and citizens.

Steve Bannon (a close ally and strategist of Donald Trump) calls it the “Flood the Zone” strategy when discussing the media, stating:

“All we have to do is flood the zone. Every day we hit them with three things. They’ll bite on one, and we’ll get all of our stuff done, bang, bang, bang. These guys will never—will never be able to recover”.
– Steve Bannon

The idea here is that there’s going to be so much happening so fast that it will be next to impossible to cover it all effectively, and disseminate that information to people in a way that is coherent, and people will actually be interested in consuming. There is simply too much to cover, and way too much information to get people to listen and/or care about.

Now, this interview with Bannon happened back in 2019, but I think we can certainly see some similarities today. I can especially see some similarities with what John Stewart talked about this past Monday, where he expressed frustrations with the Democrats for simply not doing anything. Their argument thus far being, that they need to pick their battles, while it seems like to us, they aren’t picking any at all. Stewart points to several examples of points where the Democrats could have stood their ground, but instead opted to keel over and pass things through the divided senate anyways.

It appears the Democrats are trying to do the opposite of the Trump team, rather than push everything through, they’re trying to find one or two key things they can focus on to try and shore up support in voters. I think this is an interesting, yet seemingly ineffective method in this instance.

When I studied public relations,we had a very poignant focus on key messages. Key messages are the main messages and points you want to drive home to your audience. Usually these consist of very specific, concise, and clear points that you want people to remember. For example, think of politicians doing a scrum, when they’re asked a question, they’ll often pivot to a key message that you will have heard before, over and over. Sometimes they do this effectively, and other times, well, not so much. Another example I can give comes from current Canadian politics. Peirre Poilievre is known for a few rather catchy key messages and slogans. The most prominent one over the last two years related to getting rid of the carbon tax imposed by the Liberal government, using the slogan “axe the tax.” Now it was an unpopular policy amongst voters, so it really struck home as it was one of his main platform promises. Given the displeasure around the carbon tax, he also labelled then Liberal leader candidate and now Prime Minister Mark Carney “Carbon Tax Carney.” Poilievre was able to create a key message, and continue to drive it home through a slogan, and through labelling his opponent as highly supportive of the tax. Now whether this worked in practice, today’s election call will have us finding out over the next several weeks.

One thing I think is fairly important when it comes to key messages is picking something that your audience cares about, or believes is at least somewhat true. One of the main complaints about Kamla Harris’s 2024 campaign, is that she didn’t talk about the economy enough, and distance herself from Biden’s economy. Trump had the upper hand in the sense that he could hit on a topic that voters felt was a key issue, telling them how it was the worst economy ever. Now in a Canadian sense, I think of a podcast episode from Front Burner that I heard back in February. In this interview the interviewee, Mike Crawley, stated: “a PC strategist who told me that, you know, when the NDP and the Liberals sort of go after Doug Ford on an attack like of ‘he doesn’t care about you,’ that it doesn’t work because people think that Doug Ford actually does care about them.” While I don’t have a poll that says directly “does Doug Ford Care about you?” I do have a poll from Ipsos that we can loosely infer that idea from. While Doug Ford quite literally won in every single question, I think if you’re looking for if people believe he cares about them or not, you can point to the following questions:

Someone whose views best represent my own (31%)
Someone who you’d like to have a beer or coffee with (30%)
Someone who will help make things more affordable for the middle class (27%)
Someone you can trust (25%)

So at least in comparison to the other leaders, Ford appeared more favourable in all of those categories by 9-17 points. Paired with the fact that Ford won the provincial election, perhaps the “Ford doesn’t care about you” message wasn’t well received, as well as the leaders who were delivering it.

To build off of all of these points from information overload, to flood the zone, to key messages, next week I’ll look to focus on some basic organizational communications models to explain the concept of noise in communications.

So let’s take a look at what folks covered this week.

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Last Week Tonight with John Oliver

Episode 5 – Monday, March 17, 2025

Minor Story Mentions:

Democrats caving to fund the government.
Dr. Oz’s confirmation hearing (we actually haven’t seen anything on this yet).
Trump buying a Tesla.
Federal workers continuing to be fired, specifically a worker fired for refusing to allow Mel Gibson to purchase a firearm.
The detainment and intended deportation of Mahmoud Khalil.
The government is using “a provision under the Immigration and Nationality Act… [that gives the Secretary of State the power to deport any] alien whose presence or activities… would have potentially serious adverse foreign policy consequences.”

Main Story – Sports Betting:

The advertisements of sports betting apps. Just a note, they spent $434.4 million on TV ads last year alone (ESPN).
In states that legalized sports betting, there was a significant increase in bankruptcies.
Supreme Court struck down a ruling prohibiting sports betting in most states.
Sports groups initially were opposed to sports betting, but once legalized realized it was a lucrative way to make more money and increase engagement by fans.
There’s also a lot of new options for betting as well, with live coverage of games now referencing betting odds, advertisements within arenas, offices on arena premises, and QR codes displayed on at game televisions so people can bet mid game.
The ability to bet during a live game is a relatively newer feature.
The option to create parlay’s, which have been called “sucker bets” as they rarely end up winning.
Some sports betting apps work around age requirements by using “fake currency.”

“Yeah, it’s not gambling, it’s a social free to play sweepstakes with micro transactions that pay out real cash if you win. Available to teens when they’re brains are the most impressionable. What could possibly go wrong there?” – Jon Oliver

Complaints to athletes by sports betters when they have bad or even good games.
This is becoming a further issue as sports betting apps have expanded into college sports, where classmates are now harassing players for poor performance.
“86% of online gambling profits come from 5% of the gamblers.”
Oliver reviewed multiple instances of sports betting apps encouraging customers to continue to gamble. Such as one person being sent a crown, or another being sent $250 in bonus bets to get back into the action.
Gambling sites clawing back big wins.
The fact that gambling platforms can identify those with problems, but choose not to address them.
Suggestions to help regulate the industry: enforcing laws that are already in place (one example is the ability to deposit via credit card), eliminate prop betting on college sports, and restricting VIP programs.

Monday, March 17, 2025

Jon Stewart Knocks Dems’ Lack of Vision In Countering The Trump Agenda | The Daily Show

Stewart covered (after a week off):

The deportations of hundreds of Venezuelans to El Salvador despite a court order.
The detainment of a pro-Palestinian Columbia student with a green card (we talked about this last week).
Trump calling CNN and MSNBC “illegal” for their poor view of him.
Trump winning his own golf tournament, and then proceeding to order strikes on Yemen.
Democrat senators claiming the intent to vote no against the Republican budget which is needed to be passed to avoid a government shut down… followed by Chuck Schumer reversing course and voting in favour of the bill with no concessions from the Republicans.
The Democrats’ intention to keep waiting until Trump’s support drops below 40%.

“You’re at 27%. You’ve got to get Trump to lose 8 points of popularity just for you to get to the point where you’re 13 points below him.” – John Stewart

Chuck Schumer’s strategy to talking to Republican senators: Do it at the gym.

“But I have to tell you something, pedaling really hard and not going anywhere, it’s a great metaphor for the Democratic Party right now.” – John Stewart

How Republican’s need Democrat support to pass anything, and yet everything has been passed. Including all the controversial appointment.
Democrats attempting to make grounds by talking up sports, going on more podcasts, and posting get ready with me’s (GRWM) on social media as they explain what Republicans are doing, a “choose your character” compilation of various Democrat senators.

Tuesday, March 18, 2025

Trump Defies Court Order, Deports Migrants, And Still Finds Time to Trash Biden | The Daily Show

Jordan Klepper covered:

Trump’s focus on deporting people suspected of being members of Venezuelan gang Tren de Aragua. This focus led to deporting suspects not back to Venezuela, but to El Salvador instead.
Trump’s use of the Alien Enemies Act of 1798, last used during World War Two to round up Japanese Americans.
This Act is only allowed to be used during wartime.
The administration refusal to abide by a court order to turn the planes carrying deportees around.
They claimed that the Judge’s “verbal order didn’t count.” They then argued that since the planes were already over international water, the judge did not have jurisdiction.
Then Trump called the judge a lunatic and said he should be impeached.
Trump attempting to void Biden’s pardons for the Jan 6 committee, claiming that using an autopen makes the signatures void.

Wednesday, March 19, 2025

DOGE Protestors Turn Their Focus on Tesla & Delayed NASA Astronauts Make It Home | The Daily Show

Jordan Klepper covered:

JFK file release.
The backlash against Elon Musk. This included at Republican town halls and protests at Telsa dealerships.
Elon Musk’s general level of surprise when it comes to the response people have been having against him and his company. “I’ve never done any harmful, I’ve only done productive things.”
Good work Musk actually did (like getting stranded astronauts back from the ISS).

Thursday, March 20, 2025

GOP Pumps Tesla As Trump Admin Flubs JFK File Release & DEI Scrubbing | The Daily Show

Jordan Klepper covered:

Trump’s commitment to bring back “competence and common sense.”
The release of the JFK files, and the leak of Social Security information.
The mishaps around removing DEI references from government websites.
Tesla stock collapsing, and Howard Lutnick suggesting people purchase Tesla stock.

And there you have it…

Another busy and chaotic week covered comedically.

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