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I love John Oliver
They both (Oliver and Maher) pander to their demo and/or the canard that there are essentially 2 parties/political persuasions (conservative/"liberal", republican/democrat) that are ostensibly at odds with each other, when in fact many are driven primarily by wealthy funding/special interests. Neither serve "the people" , but rather, they cater to the very few with wealth/power/global interests which aren't always necessarily aligned with the interests of the majority. The media, despite any appearances of 'objectivity' or alignment with a particular party, are complicit in playing up this apparent 'division' to keep the average citizen misinformed and divided (which in turn minimizes the potential for movements towards change). HBO certainly isn't immune to this cycle -- Maher/Oliver perform a similar function as mainstream media, simply catering to a demo that likes to pat themselves on the back for being informed/'smarter' than the typical denizen obtaining their info from 'Fox News' or a local tabloid. Largely optics, and ultimately to our collective detriment.
...not to say there isn't some valuable/useful intel to be gleaned from watching Oliver/Maher (or any media program), so long as one applies appropriate amounts of scrutiny to filter out the substance from the white noise, which takes a certain amount of time and effort (and an understanding that so much of what we're fed has an ulterior agenda obfuscated from the surface layer)..
Second John Oliver on last week tonight. I wasn't crazy about him on the daily show, but love him now.
Time to break out the tin foil hats...
Hats of foil aren't required. Some objective analysis skills can come in handy, however.
Rachel Maddow, she takes the time to explain her methodology. She actually takes the time to create quality journalism.
Non-U.S. based sources are also important Acc1. Despite claims to the contrary, our "press" is far from un-biased; the ideals of 'journalistic ethics' are increasingly rare these days, from ANY source -- U.S. or otherwise. Absorbing views from foreign press and comparing to U.S.-only sources provides a markedly more "balanced" perspective than anyone can obtain from a combo of (as examples) Maddow, Maher, and/or Oliver. That said, we're more or less on the same page here.
Agreed dir1. I meant to include "international" in my humble mix of reading everything. My favorite, is I typically follow Chinese economic developments through US sources. Whenever I travel internationally, I grab the English China Daily and it's the same results, but presented through a very different lens.
I love his detailed topic breakdowns too
Watch Reality Asserts Itself series in therealnews.com or read articles on truthdig.com
While you aren't wrong Dir1, we have to source info from somewhere considering we don't have the time to all perform the investigative journalism ourselves. All things considered, I believe Oliver and Maher do pretty good jobs. Oliver with his detailed connection of dots, Maher with his expressive views that contradict typical liberal values, and as mentioned, I don't hate Maddow . Despite hating Maddow. Otherwise, where do you get your "truth"
From? Oh? Everywhere? Cool me too. And from this, the two aforementioned I've found to be pretty fair. Despite ideologies.
Ah yes, the perks of our industry; we get to be international men/women of mystery while absorbing views from myriad sources. We have a future as diplomats/ambassadors.. ;-)
Here's a bit of a bread crumb... and this is from almost 10yrs ago: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/how-the-spooks-took-over-the-news-780672.html