A new study has revealed that Comedy Central’s ‘The Colbert Report’ may just be the most powerful news related program on television.
Stephen Colbert did a better job at teaching people about campaign financing than any other news organization including FOX News, CNN and MSNBC.
“It’s the first study actually showing that Colbert is doing a better job than other news sources at teaching people about campaign financing,” said Bruce W. Hardy, Ph.D., lead author of the study and a senior researcher at the Annenberg Public Policy Center (APPC) of the University of Pennsylvania. “Consistently, we found that Colbert did better than every other news source we included in our model.” (Via the APPC)
In 2012, Stephen Colbert taught viewers how to create your own Super PAC, Colbert Super PAC SHH. With the assistance of his personal attorney and former Federal Election Commission chairman Trevor Potter, he was able to teach the world how easy it is to set up a shell corporation, which could then funnel all of the anonymous donations back to a PAC. Essentially, showing how unfair the election process maybe.
According to the study they found that because Stephen Colbert used humor in his news programs he was able to explain things so that people can understand them more easily.
“Colbert did better than any other news source at teaching,” Hardy said. “There were two reasons. First was the narrative structure. He walked us through creating a super PAC and every episode was a continuation of that story. And second was the use of humor and satire.”
Despite, the shocking results of the study, the validity of the results do come into question. For example, only 1,200 people were contacted for the study that was called “Stephen Colbert‘s Civics Lesson”. So, credibility does come into question.
Regardless of the possibility confirmation bias of the study, get your education while you still can because ‘The Colbert Report‘ will come to a close at the end of 2014.
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Photo Credit: Comedy Central
