What's the best way to become informed about a topic? Or, is it better to stay ignorant?
There are basically 3 grades of reporting - trashy lies, very biased and informative. Misreporting what people actually said is a strong tell of the first two - which can still be fun to read but ultimately they're trying to sell you on something that is probably against your interests.
For "biased" rather than outright lies, I think the two most common easily observable techniques I see are:
- Quoting known unreliable sources: "Black people eat human babies! (say KKK leadership)"
- Using passive and active voices to shift blame: "Police shoot and kill bystander during drug bust" vs. "Shots fired during drug bust fatally injured potentially uninvolved man"
Read disparate sources knowing they each have their political biases. That is - explicitly read some right (or left) wing news you don't like as a check & balance on the flavor of news you do like to read.
Understand the difference between the news & editorial side of papers.
I would also note that "business news" (WSJ/Bloomberg/etc) tend to be more just-the-facts than your median WaPo/NYT/Fox/MSNBC/NYPost/LAT.
"Between the years 1939 and 1945 more than 6,000,000 Jews died amid a global surge of fatal diseases." is roughly the level of factual accuracy in that specific episode.
In general, I think even without familiarity of the topics discussed it is easy to see how in every episode John Oliver cherry-picks statistics, presents the opinions of individuals as facts or as widely held opinions and slathers the whole show in adjectives so you know exactly what is the correct opinion you are supposed to hold.
I quite enjoy the show as entertainment, but I would not turn to it as a source of truth or to become better informed about a topic.
If that question exist, the answer is: be ignorant. If you are involved into the topic, you will be pretty informed. So the question is: should you be involved into the topic in he first place. If true, you go to the Uni, join NGO, join related job or research program and get informed pretty quickly, otherwise it's not worthy. Besides, with contemporary media all you can hope for is getting misinformed.
I think its success can be attributed to how it presents things that are often inherently worrying, controversial or critical. By partially presenting it in a funny way, it's easier to digest.
The reports typically present verifiable sources and quotes - at least in part. But I don't think he is suggesting that he's the arbiter of unbiased truth. There are clear biases, exaggerations and so on. What they choose to cover is also impacted by these biases.
Given all that, it seems more honest and authentic rather than less.
Compare that to (non-satirical) news media that _does_ act as if it's objectively truthful (except for example if pressed in court). Where claims are made _without_ verifiable sources but via punditry and half-truths.