[DanielBMarkham]

Interesting format. First time I've watched him. This is a pet topic, so I wanted to watch. But I stopped about half-way through.

If you need a joke every 10 seconds or so -- otherwise you lose attention -- I guess it's okay. Seemed to cover this topic well enough. But if you need that amount of humor, if I were you I might want to up my game a bit.

The problem with entertainment disguising itself as useful information is bias. At the end of the day, it doesn't really matter to most people what the guy is saying. His criteria for a successful broadcast is something that emotionally moves folks and that he can make entertain people the maximum amount. The viewer's criteria is to laugh and feel like they now understand some complex subject.

Whether or not the information is biased or not never enters the picture between the two parties. In fact, the more complexity that's introduced, the less likely the material is to be entertaining. Likewise, the more you're laughing, the less you're probably learning. But it doesn't matter because everybody's having a good time. Reminds me of talk radio in the early 90s (except the politics are all different, of course)

[nitrogen]

You should watch the entire segment because he "plot twists" a little past half way.

And the jokes are just part of the Last Week Tonight formula. This is information disguising itself as entertainment, not the other way around. Oliver also did a segment recently about special tax districts that was quite informative, as another example of the LWT formula for you to sample.

You get a lot more information from a LWT piece than from traditional news; the comedy bit might even just be to avoid being sued for satirizing living people (maybe "comedians" can get away with more than "journalists").

[baldfat]

My point is still the same take away all the jokes and look at only that facts. John Oliver does a better job at breaking down stories into parts that tell the story better.

John Oliver is entertainment but the News facts are presented better then mainline news.

My case in point: New Neutrality. He singlehandedly turned the whole issue into something people a) could understand b) then decided if it was something they should care about. For YEARS tech community went no where then John Oliver immediately made it into an issue most people understood and changed FCC and Net Neutrality overnight,