4 ms·

I was unaware of these accusations, do you have have any supporting information?

AnthonyMouse 3y ago
They're comedy shows. They send someone to record an hour-long interview but the whole segment is 5 minutes long and the clip they air is only a few seconds. Selective editing is built into the format, they don't spend the airtime to run the full interview and their purpose is to choose the short clip which has the most comedy value or makes the target look bad.
- hef19898 3y ago
  There was not a single interview done by LWTN for that segment, they took those from other sources. And the segment was pretty good actually, covered all the major points and didn't have any major errors. Actually, it is light years ahead of what other news outlets reported. Surey it is not on the same level as an audit report, but that is not its purpose. It is much closer to a comprehensive executive summary of an incident report than anything I have ever seen in media elsewher. Re: selection of statements, the reports in Fukushima and Cherbobyl do the same. The point is to showcase the underlying issues with concrete examples and statements. Nothing wrong with that per-se. And in th LWTN segment, it was not done in bad faith, it is bot FOX news after all.
  - BuckYeah 3y ago
    Well put. Most skeptics these days are borderline conspiracists when it comes to delivering their opinions. The person above only needed to say, “trust but verify comedic claims” but instead they went down the all too common road of dogwhistling to other “skeptics.” I’m confident that quite a lot of John Oliver’s claims are verifiable (I have spent a lot of time doing my own research on the claims after watching the show). Not saying I’m a brilliant investigator but wanted to offer an opposing opinion. Blatantly sowing distrust is exactly the kind of behavior a true skeptic hopes to avoid.
  - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
    > It is much closer to a comprehensive executive summary of an incident report than anything I have ever seen in media elsewher. This is the danger in it. They pick someone they don't like and basically do a hit piece. Now sometimes the target is actually bad and deserving of the criticism, and then if you try to get the real story, the real story is that the target is actually bad and deserving of the criticism. But then they'll run a segment in the same style where the target is just someone from the outgroup of the show's target audience.
    - hef19898 3y ago
      [flagged]
      - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
        [flagged]
        hef19898 3y ago
        As I said, their reporting has been scrutinzed a lot. Including a multi-million dollar defamition suite brought by this coal magnate. Guess what, the show didn't get it wrong. You don'z have to like the humor or bias of the show. Factually so, so far, their reporting was always as correct as possible at the time of filming. Or do you have proof otherwise, retractions they did, law suites they lost, that kind of stuff?
        mistermann 3y ago
        I think it's interesting how normalized it has become in our culture that burden of proof is only necessary in one direction, or is not necessary at all to adopt a belief.
        kortilla 3y ago
        Don't confuse "didn't lose a defamation lawsuit" with "didn't get it wrong".
- Lendal 3y ago
  They do that because nobody wants to look at hundreds of dead bodies or talk to grieving widows, or search through rubble for broken airplane parts or data recorders. That's not so funny. Just because comedy shows focus on entertainment value doesn't mean there's no evidence. They have a different focus from investigators or courts, but in democratic countries, the funds to run investigations come from politicians and public outcry, and that comes from the people actually giving a sh*t about it. So they do perform a function.

They're comedy shows. They send someone to record an hour-long interview but the whole segment is 5 minutes long and the clip they air is only a few seconds. Selective editing is built into the format, they don't spend the airtime to run the full interview and their purpose is to choose the short clip which has the most comedy value or makes the target look bad.

hef19898 3y ago
There was not a single interview done by LWTN for that segment, they took those from other sources. And the segment was pretty good actually, covered all the major points and didn't have any major errors. Actually, it is light years ahead of what other news outlets reported. Surey it is not on the same level as an audit report, but that is not its purpose. It is much closer to a comprehensive executive summary of an incident report than anything I have ever seen in media elsewher. Re: selection of statements, the reports in Fukushima and Cherbobyl do the same. The point is to showcase the underlying issues with concrete examples and statements. Nothing wrong with that per-se. And in th LWTN segment, it was not done in bad faith, it is bot FOX news after all.
- BuckYeah 3y ago
  Well put. Most skeptics these days are borderline conspiracists when it comes to delivering their opinions. The person above only needed to say, “trust but verify comedic claims” but instead they went down the all too common road of dogwhistling to other “skeptics.” I’m confident that quite a lot of John Oliver’s claims are verifiable (I have spent a lot of time doing my own research on the claims after watching the show). Not saying I’m a brilliant investigator but wanted to offer an opposing opinion. Blatantly sowing distrust is exactly the kind of behavior a true skeptic hopes to avoid.
- AnthonyMouse 3y ago
  > It is much closer to a comprehensive executive summary of an incident report than anything I have ever seen in media elsewher. This is the danger in it. They pick someone they don't like and basically do a hit piece. Now sometimes the target is actually bad and deserving of the criticism, and then if you try to get the real story, the real story is that the target is actually bad and deserving of the criticism. But then they'll run a segment in the same style where the target is just someone from the outgroup of the show's target audience.
  - hef19898 3y ago
    [flagged]
    - AnthonyMouse 3y ago
      [flagged]
      - hef19898 3y ago
        As I said, their reporting has been scrutinzed a lot. Including a multi-million dollar defamition suite brought by this coal magnate. Guess what, the show didn't get it wrong. You don'z have to like the humor or bias of the show. Factually so, so far, their reporting was always as correct as possible at the time of filming. Or do you have proof otherwise, retractions they did, law suites they lost, that kind of stuff?
        mistermann 3y ago
        I think it's interesting how normalized it has become in our culture that burden of proof is only necessary in one direction, or is not necessary at all to adopt a belief.
        kortilla 3y ago
        Don't confuse "didn't lose a defamation lawsuit" with "didn't get it wrong".
Lendal 3y ago
They do that because nobody wants to look at hundreds of dead bodies or talk to grieving widows, or search through rubble for broken airplane parts or data recorders. That's not so funny. Just because comedy shows focus on entertainment value doesn't mean there's no evidence. They have a different focus from investigators or courts, but in democratic countries, the funds to run investigations come from politicians and public outcry, and that comes from the people actually giving a sh*t about it. So they do perform a function.