El Joe T. Hodo Show: Comedy Journalism in Collaboration With Social Movements

Since 2013, the Joe T. Hodo Comedy Journalism Project has collaborated with movements across Mexico, Latin America, and among immigrant communities in the United States, producing over 150 satirical short films and sketches broadcast on Mexican public television and on social media that demonstrate the power of grassroots organizing and challenge the excesses of corporate and political power. The project is the creation of audiovisual journalist and comedian Gregory Max Berger, who portrays Texas born oil and mining baron Joe T. Hodo, a fictional character and antagonist to communities organizing to defend their rights and territory.

Through a highly developed collaborative process, the project’s team works directly with movements to create participatory and comedic opinion journalism. The project also creates sketches lampooning the increasingly bellicose foreign policy of the United States in Latin America. Over the years, the project has also taken on issues such as gentrification in Mexico’s urban spaces, as well as attacks on LGBTQ rights, abortion rights, and other hard-won social gains.

The Fund for Authentic Journalism is proud to support this ongoing, multi-platform, and deeply collaborative experiment in community-based comedy journalism, which shows that satire can be more than commentary: it can be an active tool for organizing, for visibility, and for collective political intervention.

Born in the United States, Berger has lived and worked in Mexico since 1998.