John Oliver and Comedic Activism
Beth Kelly • JOURNAL TODAY
[dropcap]J[/dropcap]Last Week Tonight operates outside of the advertising constraints that hamstring other editorial news programs. Without the concern of alienating potential sponsors, and using his comedic gifts to great effect, Oliver has done what few news anchors have been able to do: he has spurred people to action.
Last Week Tonight takes on topics that typical news shows fear to address: net neutrality, climate change, poultry farming, student debt and more. While there are underground magazines and websites that do confront these controversial issues, none has the reach or power to motivate that Oliver’s program has exhibited. The show has attracted a number of high profile guests in its year and a half on the air, including journalist Fareed Zakaria, astrophysicist Stephen Hawking, comedian Kathy Griffin, and recently, CIA whistleblower Edward Snowden, in a special interview in Russia that managed to be hilarious and enlightening at the same time.
Oliver’s long segments explore complex issues in a way that other news shows are simply incapable of. In an era of fast paced programming and audiences with short attention spans, the show respects its viewers and trusts them to follow Oliver’s lengthy, convoluted rants to their conclusion. Untethered to corporate interests, Oliver and his writing team can take aim at any target they wish, and his show works both as informative journalism and a satirical assault on the corruption and greed that creates the current media bias.
The infusion of humor helps to pace the long segments and disarm viewers who might otherwise find the material too negative or overwhelming. The use of silly metaphors and sarcastic asides, coupled with Oliver’s terrific deadpan delivery, creates a sense of optimism and hope in topics normally fraught with despair. Take the seemingly endless battle for net neutrality – a fight to keep the Internet open and free from the constraints that service providers seek to impose on the speed of data transmission, even as fiber optics are allowing bandwidth capabilities to increase many times over. Oliver’s segment not only delineated the struggle in simple terms and laid bare the corporate interests that threaten free speech, but encouraged viewers to comment on FCC.gov in such numbers that part of the website crashed.
[dropcap]S[/dropcap]imilarly, a segment on poultry farming has created a response that lawmakers believe could help influence a crucial upcoming vote in Washington. The freedom that Last Week Tonight has to tackle issues normally kept well out of the public spotlight makes it an important step in the right direction for television news. Large companies with lots of money will do everything possible to keep their abuses of power out of news broadcasts, and they hold tremendous sway over any news show where their advertising dollars comprise a large portion of that show’s profit. If the trend of Last Week Tonight continues, however, even streaming services like Hulu and Netflix could find themselves producing news programs outside the influence of corporate interests, and usher in a new age of objective reporting. It’s something that’s already been started by Huffington Post with their popular Huffington Post Live channel, available only online.
At a point in time when so much of our country’s population is overworked and distracted to the point of apathy, activist journalism is an exceptionally difficult field to find success in. Last Week Tonight has set a promising new template for the intersection of pay cable, comedy, and the treatment of controversial topics. Hopefully, other networks will follow Oliver’s lead and seek to bring objective coverage of sensitive issues into the mainstream, to the benefit of an informed and grateful electorate.
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