this post was submitted on 06 Mar 2024
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Comedy news shows. They can be funny, but the more I learn about topics in depth the more I realize how much biased the shows are. A segment that might have previously left me feeling better informed might instead make me feel like someone is trying to fool me or tell a one sided story.
In one episode of last week tonight, John Oliver was roasting Boris Johnson for mumbling the poem 'Road to Mandalay' while visiting Myanmar. Calling the act, absolutely offensive or something. Now, not a whole lot of Myanmar people here don't know the poem. And among those who know, the poem is either fairly well regarded or they hold no such feelings like taking offense. Atleast among the people I know. Boris Johnson's an absolute clown, but you can definitely sense the bias there.
Bingo. John Oliver is one of the worst offenders here, I think. He has a slick, humorous presentation style and a lot of his material is genuinely informative. At the same time, as you note he'll throw in something that is either horribly cherry picked or has a bad misinterpretation.
I've watched "some more news" a couple of times, I found them pretty alright. They're pretty clearly biased, they're just biased in a direction that I tend to like more than others. Still kind of, full of stupid skits though, and for the comedy, ymmv, certainly, it doesn't really land for me at all. Quality of the information is kind of. Iffy, it would seem like, but I haven't looked into it that hard.
Of course, biased in a direction that you like is the most hazardous to keeping a clear view of a situation. That's the easiest way to slip by your guard.
Yeah, but I'm conscious of it. I've kind of thrown out conceptions of unbiased news as being something that even exists in the first place anyways, so I'd rather at least have something that sort of, is given from a perspective I understand, and which conforms to whatever my standards for information are, rather than just having like, unbiased reporting on events.
The decision of what events to cover isn't necessarily going to be unbiased, the decision of what language to use when covering those events isn't necessarily unbiased, the decision of which sources the "unbiased" news trusts for their reporting isn't necessarily unbiased. I would kind of rather just have a news source that I can sort of, trust to do it's job, and present me with information that I can understand, and know what to do with, rather than a news source where I have to do my own journalism to find out whether or not their story really means anything as a whole.
If you understand and can more thoroughly comprehend the bias of the news you're given, it's easier to kind of push it through the framework and turn it into easy to consume gelatinous news paste.
I stopped watching “last week tonight” after seeing some episodes about topics I was already informed about. I realized that the amount of truth-bending was borderline malicious.