Political Television

This weekend I saw an episode of “Last Week Tonight, with John Oliver” for the first time. I have to say I wasn’t impressed. The part of this week’s show I saw was about all the ways America’s prison system is pretty broken. The show was funny, but afterwards, reading an article about times when the author considered Last Week Tonight to have made legitimate social progress, I started to wonder if people actually looked to this guy for a source of quality political thought and honestly began to worry. Whether or not John Oliver’s criticism of the prison system was factually or morally correct is an entirely different issue. (In fact, I agreed with a lot of what he said.) What worried me was how incredibly poor the actual argument itself was.

The first and most dangerous element of Mr. Oliver’s show was the use of emotional language. Emotional language is a core element of rhetoric which attempts to trigger either action or a change of state in the audience by attaching an argument to an emotional response. John Oliver is pretty damn funny, which is great television, but it’s easy to put aside critical thinking when you are busy laughing, which is not great logic. In this way, there’s a certain danger to people arguing through humor, and whether or not you think the presenter has good intentions or a sound argument, emotional language should always be somewhat of a red flag to you as a viewer/consumer.

I couldn’t help but notice that Oliver’s arguments were all one-sided. Quite a few clips from various interviews and documentaries were shown, but they were all convicts or ex-convicts describing their horrible situation and how the system had failed them. What about someone who the system didn’t fail? What about someone who likes the current system? Is there anyone who favors the current system? Why was the current system put in place, and what are its benefits? The audience is resigned to ignorance, or worse, assumption. Saying only the worst about the current prison system while giving no counterarguments or alternatives a chance isn’t really productive.

Another important aspect of critical analysis which was absent from the show was a use of statistics. Statistics are very, very hard, both in that good statistics are hard to gather and even harder to present to a non-expert audience. It is easy to lie with statistics and even easier to make mistakes. Nevertheless, it is imperative that some substance be added to presented arguments in the form of hard numbers. To return to John Oliver and the prisons example, how can we tell if the prison system is a failure or not, as he claims it is? While statistics can’t be wholly relied on, more than him giving a handful of anecdotal examples and throwing out figures like “95% of all prisoners” is required as proof.

These issues all stem from the fact that people like Oliver make money by being funny and slightly controversial. They want people to watch their programs. Having a heart-warming interview with an ex-convict who now grows tomatoes gets much more views than having both sides of the story coming on the show: for example, someone who succeeded in the system and someone who failed, or maybe an ex-convict arguing for softer sentences and a police officer who wants longer ones.

The conclusion to this post is that while there’s nothing wrong with talk show hosts, or educational entertainment, it’s important to note that these things are usually simplifications or parodies of real issues. I really shouldn’t have to say this, but if you are ever tasked with making real policy change, do some more research past what the media tells you. I think too often people absorb or create poorly constructed arguments like this while entertaining themselves and then forget that the stories they are are just that: stories.