THE VIDEO SHELF · false balance in media
Climate Change Debate: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)
A short Last Week Tonight segment where John Oliver stages a statistically representative climate debate, with Bill Nye facing a crowd of dissenters. It satirizes false balance in media coverage.
Why HN readers recommended it
Cited to illustrate false balance and the trouble with giving all sides equal weight.
This is a summary from the source dataset, not an endorsement by Hacker News or the video creator.
Video & recommendation details
- Creator / channel
- LastWeekTonight
- Topic
- false balance in media
- Format
- comedy
- Level
- general
- HN recommenders in dataset
- 3
- HN mentions in dataset
- 5
- Recommendation years in dataset
- 2015–2023
These counts and years describe the included Hacker News records; they are not YouTube views or the video’s publication date.
From the original HN conversations
Excerpts from the recorded comments. Follow each source for the full comment and surrounding discussion.
Watch Fox new much? Climate deniers love this argument. Jon Stewart answers your question here: [LINK] While looking for the clip I found this gem: [VIDEO]
lbenes on Hacker News · 2015-10
In Gains in Antarctic ice might offset lossesExactly, and demonstrated beautifully by John Oliver: [VIDEO] An aim at 'balance' is part of the problem because it's not an aim at facts or truth. Aiming at balance is the media twisting debate to produce maximum outrage, and therefore increase 'consumer engagement'. Aiming at …
BLKNSLVR on Hacker News · 2022-02
In You cannot police misinformation in a fair, reproducible, and representative wayThere is a nice visual example of this made by John Oliver on his show to illustrate this to a more understandable level: [VIDEO]
consp on Hacker News · 2022-07
In The audacious PR plot that seeded doubt about climate change
Summaries, classifications and recommendation records are from the HackerTube source dataset. Read about this library and its limitations.