One of my favorite genres of TV shows is what's know as "fake news." This is essentially a parody of a typical cable news show like something you might see on MSNBC or CNN. Such shows include The Colbert Report and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. 

A few months ago Daily Show correspondent John Oliver launched his own show on HBO called Last Week Tonight. I have been a fan of Oliver for a long time and I am so happy for him. Not only have I seen him preform stand up live, but I was also lucky enough to see a live taping of Last Week Tonight, this past summer. Needless to say, it was fantastic.

What I really want to talk about is the state of fake news shows. Here's the thing... they're not so fake anymore, especially Last Week Tonight. After watching a half hour of John Oliver I feel more informed that I do watching pretty much any "real" news show. A huge portion of my generation now gets its news delivered via comedy rather than through traditional news sources. Now this can be taken a few different ways:

1) How pathetic are traditional news sources that we have to resort to comedians?

2) Well those kids just don't care about current events.

Personally, I believe the first one. At least within my social circles, people of my generation care more and are more informed than those of older generations. News sources have just become so faulty that they are no longer reliable. So next time you go to turn on some cable news channel, maybe switch over to HBO instead.