[CorsiHockeyLeague]

Originally Posted by Cecil Terwilliger

lol.

John Oliver is misleading because his 15 minute long pieces, on subjects that a full length documentary couldn't cover in two hours, aren't in depth enough.

No one said they aren't in-depth enough. They're often quite in-depth. They're just selective with the facts they provide to give a pre-determined impression that often doesn't reflect reality, because giving a more accurate picture would be less entertaining and less prone to get you all fired up about whatever issue he's energetically tackling.

Omitting key facts is dangerous? GTFO with that. I guess you find every newspaper on the planet dangerous, every news broadcast, every news magazine show like 60 minutes, every documentary etc etc to be dangerous.

I guess we've gotten to the point where we just accept that everything is fake news now? Did the Trump people succeed that thoroughly in undermining faith in all news reporting? Because I realize a lot of it is garbage that's solely designed to keep your eyes on the screen, but that doesn't mean we should just take it as read that that's the only way it can be. I know it's frustrating to try to sort out the good reporting from the junk, but writing off the whole industry like this is sad and defeatist.

To be clear, no, news broadcasts and outlets and documentaries should not be omitting key facts for entertainment purposes, and there actually are a few people in the business who still do their best to include all of those key facts.

Or he's like every other OPINION based show where he is trying to highlight a subject and sometimes that means massaging the facts a bit and only showing you the worst side of a subject in order to get people to become interested in a topic and use his show as a jumping off point to become educated.

Speaking of "lol", this is an absurd bit of spin. No, it is not intended to provide a "jumping off point" for people to go and educate themselves. That's not at all how his pieces are presented. They're presented as "let John tell you about this problem with our society that you probably haven't given much thought to or possibly haven't ever even noticed".

And if what he gives you gives you a completely skewed first impression of the topic, well, there are plenty of psychological studies to show that those sorts of first impressions are very hard to rectify, even if you're presented with solid evidence of what was missing from the original version of reality you were presented with. If you're not prepared to take it for what it is - a bit of fun - that could be a problem.

If you you don't know all the facts on a subject it is your fault. Not John Oliver's. What a ridiculous thing to even say.

As if anyone knows "all the facts" on just about any topic, to say nothing of whatever random thing Oliver is talking about on a given week. Yes, it's entirely his fault if he deliberately or recklessly misleads people because the misleading version of events is more entertaining. Just as it's Sean Hannity's fault when he does it. What a ridiculous thing to say to suggest otherwise.

And this whole "oh he's only comedy so it doesn't count". Really? because he is more honest and accurate than any news broadcast on the big 4 networks, on any of the cable news networks, of any of the news magazine shows.

No, he's incredibly not, and you're incredibly naive for thinking this.

So what is John Oliver less accurate than? The Economist? The New Yorker? Academic journals? If this is the standard we are holding him to, then clearly we've lost sight of what matters.

No one's holding him to any standards, per se. He's not a journalist, so he doesn't have to have journalistic integrity. The point is that there is a way to enjoy Last Week Tonight, and it's to realize that you're not being educated, you're being entertained. Don't get worked up about whatever John's getting worked up about, just sit back have a laugh.

All in all, a terrible take. I don't know that I've ever seen that much naivety combined with that much cynicism in one post.