John Oliver’s piece on Sinclair was a thing of beauty, and you owe it to yourself to see it. And he certainly doesn’t need any help defending himself, particularly given the impotence of Hyman’s attempted rebuttal (apparently Sinclair folks haven’t gotten the memo not to respond to someone who is smarter and funnier than you—it never ends well).
What is worth noting, however, is how Hyman manages to undercut his own points.
Hyman frames his response by advising us that we shouldn’t take anything John Oliver says seriously, and then goes on to do precisely that, with the twist being that he misreports (or misunderstands) the content of Oliver’s argument.
Hyman says “Oliver wanted his viewers to be horrified at Sinclair’s size” (but, weren’t we told Oliver was just about being funny? Ah, details.). The rebuttal to this is that Oliver works for HBO, which is owned by Time Warner, which is much bigger than Sinclair Broadcasting.
There are lots of problems with this logic, such as it is, but the most obvious point here is that the premise—that Oliver’s critique was based on the size of Sinclair—is not true. The whole jumping off point for the Oliver piece was the importance of local news to the public sphere and the singular threat that Sinclair poses, as a company that not only buys up local stations, but then forces these now local-in-name-only news organizations to feed their viewers prefabricated news and opinion pieces. This has always been the primary problem with Sinclair.
And despite claiming that “Truth or accuracy have nothing to do with [Oliver’s] skits” (“skits?”—apparently Hyman hasn’t actually seen the show), Hyman is unable to point out a single fact that Oliver misstated.
Rather than supporting his claim that Oliver’s piece has no connection to reality, Hyman relies on the logical fallacy of poisoning the well. Oliver’s arguments should be dismissed because “his mission is to be funny.” And, of course, he’s a member of the Hollywood elite:
Hyman frames his response by advising us that we shouldn’t take anything John Oliver says seriously, and then goes on to do precisely that, with the twist being that he misreports (or misunderstands) the content of Oliver’s argument.
Hyman says “Oliver wanted his viewers to be horrified at Sinclair’s size” (but, weren’t we told Oliver was just about being funny? Ah, details.). The rebuttal to this is that Oliver works for HBO, which is owned by Time Warner, which is much bigger than Sinclair Broadcasting.
There are lots of problems with this logic, such as it is, but the most obvious point here is that the premise—that Oliver’s critique was based on the size of Sinclair—is not true. The whole jumping off point for the Oliver piece was the importance of local news to the public sphere and the singular threat that Sinclair poses, as a company that not only buys up local stations, but then forces these now local-in-name-only news organizations to feed their viewers prefabricated news and opinion pieces. This has always been the primary problem with Sinclair.
And despite claiming that “Truth or accuracy have nothing to do with [Oliver’s] skits” (“skits?”—apparently Hyman hasn’t actually seen the show), Hyman is unable to point out a single fact that Oliver misstated.
Rather than supporting his claim that Oliver’s piece has no connection to reality, Hyman relies on the logical fallacy of poisoning the well. Oliver’s arguments should be dismissed because “his mission is to be funny.” And, of course, he’s a member of the Hollywood elite:
Like most entertainers, Oliver hates political opinion that isn’t hard-left.Hollywood comedians like to make fun of farmers, factory workers, and the middle class– the little people. In fly-over country. Their audiences love that
Even a cursory look at the synopses of the stories covered on Last Week Tonight would reveal that, in fact, Oliver spends the majority of each episode focusing on the details of a story that most media outlets ignore, but which has an impact on regular people. A few examples of some of the topics that Oliver’s show has examined in detail are opioid addiction, subprime lending, the Flint water crisis, mental health in the United States, credit scores, and dialysis treatment.
Quite the smorgasbord of kneeslapping jokefests, am I right?
In fact, that’s Oliver’s brand: take a topic that is almost defiantly unsexy (e.g., special districts, chicken farming) and gets ignored because of it, but then reveal how it ought to matter to more people. Indeed, Oliver goes out of his way to take on stories specifically because they impact “farmers, workers, the middle class—the little people” but get ignored by large news organizations.
And the irony here is that there is someone who holds “the little people” in disdain. But it’s not Oliver. It’s Hyman (and, by association, Sinclair Broadcasting).
It is Sinclair itself, after all, that has taken up the business model of de-localizing local news in “fly-over” country and replacing it with content that the corporate brass in Baltimore (a coastal, urban city no less!) think those of us in the boonies ought to be hipped to. Live in rural Kentucky or Oklahoma? Too bad! Your “local news” will now be served to you by crab-cake eating suits who live and work a lobbyist’s throw from D.C.! Good thing they’re too dumb to figure it out!
And that bit of Hyman-esque snark is being used ironically to make a point about Hyman’s commentaries themselves, which are exhibit A in the case of Sinclair’s dismal view of its own audience. How else can one explain the utter paint-by-numbersish, phone-it-in nature of commentaries like this one? Hyman clearly assumes that his audience is not inquisitive enough to actually know/find out about Oliver’s actual show. He also believes his audience can be manipulated by ham-fisted, nearly self-parodic attacks on “Hollywood” types.
Then there’s the most painful cut of all: Hyman’s belief that his audience will find the phrase “don’t get your knickers in bunch” to be clever and witty (the last time someone laughed at that, they were riding in the back of a Subaru Brat on their way to the Us Festival to catch the Thompson Twins).
This effin' guy indeed.
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