By Garrick Hoffman
Liberal Arts Major

For decades, mainstream news media has continuously proven to be a red herring. Often a dubious, deceptive distraction, the news typically serves as more of fodder for the eyes of its zombie-like viewers rather than as plausible, praise-worthy sources of pressing news. It relies on its sensational quality to sell itself, merely feeding dramatic or otherwise “interesting” stories to achieve this. Even local news isn’t exempt from this. When you turn on the news at night and the story you’re fed is about a couple who gave birth on the highway, it might be time to question the integrity of your news sources and take a more skeptical, incredulous – even cynical – eye at these channels.
Thankfully there’s HBO’s Last Week Tonight with John Oliver to buoy us out of the venomous waters of mainstream news. Comprehensive without being too sensational, liberal without being dishonest, and hilarious without losing its integrity, Last Week Tonight is without a doubt amongst the cream of the crop for exploring and exposing typically unseen news stories that actually matter
LWT takes a similar approach to its comedy-news cousins, The Daily Show and The Colbert Report. (In fact, Oliver himself used to appear on The Daily Show. Oliver is at the helm of the show, sitting behind a desk as he expounds on various topics to the television viewers and studio audience. He lectures almost inexorably, commercial-free, for a half hour while being punctuated by video clips to prove his point or further demonstrate the topic at hand.
The erudite and witty funnyman/Englishman has broached and continues to broach a myriad of topics on LWT – chiefly pertaining to America – that consistently disillusion and enlighten his viewers: capital punishment, wealth inequality, civil forfeiture, student debt, beauty pageants, Dr. Oz, infrastructure, and as we covered in a previous issue, sugar. The list, of course, goes on.
Not only has LWT received tremendous acclaim, but its viewership is staggering: in its first season alone, according to a September 2014 article on HollywoodReporter.com, LWT was “pulling an average of 4.1 million weekly viewers across TV airings and DVR, on-demand and HBO Go plays,” with his Sunday night slot averaging a million viewers. When the main story of his show is posted on YouTube, it invariably garners at least a million views within approximately 24 hours.
The show seemed long overdue, as it is exactly what the public needed: a platform that hosts hilarity and imperative issues at hand that are largely out of sight or ignored altogether by the public eye. The humor alleviates the weight of the stories being discussed, and we ultimately understand that what we’re listening to on the show is paramount. We again confirm in watching LWT that comedy and information prove to be a pair that coalesces into an educational powerhouse. This is satire at its best.
Last Week Tonight is in its second season and is broadcasted every Sunday on HBO at 11pm.