A Message About Media: How John Oliver and Other Hosts Shut Down Debate (Editorial)

Call it journalism, or call it comedy — it doesn’t move us forward.

The following post was written by our editor-in-chief, Phillip Hedayatnia, on his public Facebook page — follow him on Facebook and Twitter for more long-winded posts that may or may not have to do with the election.

Read (and share!) Phillip’s original Facebook post here.

I want to preface this by saying I’m a huge fan of John Oliver, and pretty much every Sunday (well, when he’s not on break), you can find me staring at my laptop screen, watching yet another episode of the often on-point and well-researched Last Week Tonight.

That said, as time’s gone on, I’ve started to like his show less and less. Not because the research isn’t good (it is), not because the jokes aren’t on point (they are), but because of what appears, in my view, to be a fundamental flaw with the show. This is a problem that extends to much of our media: the fact checkers, the pundits, the worlds of cable and print journalism in the 21st century.

Here it is: John Oliver has a point of view, and he thinks it’s right.

Opinion shows have no obligation to showcase the other side, and they have no reason to: people watch because they want the host’s opinion, not a talking head discussion or a frenzied debate. (Sorry, Larry Wilmore.) But, shows like Oliver’s — and much of the new media/comedic political sphere, including our editorial bent at RealPolitics — attempt to go beyond strict opinion into the realm of advocacy journalism, and report news. That’s where the problem lies.

Any news program has to have an editorial bent, no matter how “straight” it aims to be. Anyone who claims that the mainstream media has no bias and new liberal/conservative media are exclusively propaganda is likely misled; while new media sources are often more clear about their bias, any publication’s editorial lean is a product of the backgrounds of the journalists they employ, the implicit biases of their editors, and sometimes the interests of their funding sources. I would also argue, though, that most journalists don’t aim to generate content to help a particular political side, and instead aim to produce a fair and balanced final product.

So if you think you’re right, and the other side is totally wrong, what do you do when you try to cover both? Well, you fake objectivity. You run your article by people on both sides, you get editing help to strip away coded language, you whittle away any slanted reporting until the final product is a NYT-styled, bland, emotionless hodge-podge of descriptions, opinions, counter-opinions, and counters to those opinions. The end product might not be very exciting, but it does the job — and hopefully avoids directly backing a liberal or conservative narrative.

With the rise of social media, though, new media has increasingly shirked this method in favor of advocacy journalism. Instead of faux objectivity, advocacy journalism invites journalists to bluntly push a narrative if it’s “right” — and, in turn, invites bias. Journalists still try to report stories accurately, but they are free to produce a story that’s objective by their personal standards (but not necessarily actually objective).

I’ll give you an example. I’m not a fan of Hillary Clinton (as my Facebook friends know all too well), and as a journalist, I have to cover her use of a private email server while at the State Department. Traditional journalism standards would dictate that I cover the “controversy” by quoting the candidate, pointing out an inaccuracy, then including statements from her press secretary and from a conservative opponent. However, advocacy journalism would lead to a far different article: I’d write in a far angrier tone, doing more line-by-line refutation, and then generate a conclusion: Hillary Clinton made false statements about her use of a private server, and she should apologize or correct the record.

In my narrative, my side is right, and anyone who disagrees regarding her truthfulness on this issue is wrong; there’s one truth, and I’m telling it.

The thing is, there are counters to my narrative. That article misses how precious Secretaries of State used private servers, and doesn’t analyze the actual potential damage of her use of one. I’m thoroughly convinced that doesn’t matter, because what matters is her truthfulness, not what she fibbed about… but that’s my judgement on the story, and one that then is inevitably shifted onto the reader through my reporting.

So what does this have to do with John Oliver?

On yesterday’s episode of Last Week Tonight, John Oliver provided one of his 18-minute “breakdowns” of a hot-button political issue, in this case charter school education. To summarize his segment, Oliver made the case that charters aren’t overseen properly, providing a litany of examples where charters spectacularly failed in a number of states and seemingly exposing fundamental flaws in the charter school system that would necessitate massive reforms, and perhaps even rethinking the idea of charter schools altogether.

It was a powerful piece, and to anyone who hasn’t studied the issue, I don’t see how someone could not side with him after watching it (unless you hate kids or are a money-grubbing CEO, apparently). Oliver’s segment framed the debate as pure-market extremist educational libertarians versus the needs of children. Either you’re with the corporations, or you’re with the people. (Sound familiar?)

The problem is, that’s not the whole story. Everything John Oliver said was correct; his facts were accurate, his characterization of those facts was reasonable, and the conclusions he drew from them were fair. His narrative, though, ignored a great deal of counters to his points: charter schools may serve at-risk and minority students better than traditional public schools, the profit motive has worked well in some cases, and Oliver’s critique of competitive pressures in education could be responded to by looking to the stagnation of American public education relative to many spectacular charter school systems.

I’m not here to say that Oliver is right or wrong — that’s not mine to contend, nor should the opinion of an 18-year-old automatically supersede that of skilled education policy researchers and journalists who’ve covered this issue for some time.

However, I’m here to say that something is seriously wrong with new journalism — comedic or otherwise.

John Oliver has a fair argument, but so do his critics. He has something of value to say about charter schools, but so do his detractors. Oliver’s greatest sin, if I could call it that, is his matter-of-fact, newscaster-like presentation; he’s presenting opinions as facts, and shutting down a debate before it’s even been had.

I don’t want to be too harsh on Last Week Tonight; building a once weekly comedy show, with actual journalism to boot, is hard work. As I discovered the hard way starting RealPolitics, selecting, covering, and messaging stories is an art that’s hard to learn, and even harder to master. However, at times, LWT — and other programs forming the “new media” of advocacy journalism that dots the modern media landscape — fail at producing a balanced picture.

That said, know that even if hosts have the greatest intentions, their commentary may have the worst results. Do your own research, generate your own opinions, and most importantly — this is the key part! — let them be challenged, thoroughly and often.

John Oliver’s original segment:

A takedown of it, by a libertarian columnist:

http://reason.com/…/john-olivers-anti-charter-school-rant-is