journalism

A Last Week Tonight segment on the decline of the newspaper industry and what it means for journalism, including local reporting. It uses John Oliver's comedic commentary and references the film Spotlight.

John Oliver's Last Week Tonight segment takes on Dr. Oz and the dietary supplement industry. It explains what is problematic about both, with a comedic wrap-up.

A DEF CON 26 talk by investigative journalists and hackers on the fake science industry, with bogus conferences and predatory journals that give studies false credibility. It draws on a large investigation into the money behind them.

An Al Jazeera investigation into Boeing's 787 Dreamliner, featuring current and former engineers who voice safety concerns. It covers quality control problems at the South Carolina plant and the roots of the battery problems that grounded the plane.

A Gamers Nexus investigative documentary on the black market for Nvidia AI GPUs, following smugglers, middlemen, and buyers, including reporting from China. It examines how export-restricted chips reach their users.

Coffeezilla's investigation into the Counter-Strike 2 skin gambling ecosystem, covering casino sites, influencers and esports teams that profit from it. It is part of a multi-part series on Valve's skin economy and its effects on young players.

Investigative journalist Sharyl Attkisson explains how astroturf, fake grassroots campaigns funded by corporate or political interests, manipulates media messages. The TEDx talk is about 11 minutes.

Journalist Vincent Woo discusses his New York Magazine piece on Lambda School's misleading promises, including its income share agreements and placement claims, in an interview on This Week in Startups. The host questions him pointedly.

A John Oliver Last Week Tonight segment on native advertising, showing how ads are disguised as editorial content in news media, including BuzzFeed and major newspapers.

A clip from the documentary Page One in which New York Times reporter David Carr interviews and confronts the founders of Vice magazine over their media deal. It captures tension between old and new media in 2010.

An ABC 20/20 investigation into whether the Better Business Bureau sells its ratings. It looks at BBB finances, executive pay and how grades relate to paid accreditation.

Coffeezilla recounts being offered a $20k bounty to expose a Counter-Strike skin casino, then investigates and finds a different story. It is the first episode of a series on CS skin gambling.

A Last Week Tonight segment on sponsored content in local news. John Oliver explains why local news integrity matters and how paid content disguised as news erodes it.

Former CIA officer Frank Snepp describes how, working in Vietnam from 1969 to 1975, he planted stories in major newspapers to support Agency goals. He notes that some younger reporters refused to take the bait.

A full FRONTLINE interview with journalist Julia Ioffe on Putin and alleged Russian interference in the 2016 US election.

A short excerpt of Noam Chomsky telling a BBC journalist that he does not accuse him of self-censorship. He argues that people who believed differently would not have been hired into that position.

WikiLeaks' release of cockpit footage from a 2007 US Apache helicopter attack in Baghdad that killed a group of men including two Reuters staff, and then a van that came to help the wounded. The video includes the crew's radio chatter and context on the military's initial account.

A BBC Politics Live interview in which Andrew Neil presses conservative commentator Ben Shapiro on his past statements and an incident involving Corey Lewandowski and a reporter. It is a tense, widely shared exchange.

A one-minute clip in which columnist John C. Dvorak explains to Dave Winer his technique for trolling the Apple community.

A CBC The National investigation into Apple's business practices, including undercover work on repair pricing and the battery slowdown scandal. It examines allegations of overpriced repairs and misdiagnosis.

A German STRG_F investigation into why child sexual abuse material stays online on forums, following a father whose daughter's abuse images were widely shared. The reporters tried to get the content removed by contacting hosters.

MegaLag investigates PayPal's Honey browser extension, showing how it swaps affiliate attribution and was promoted by large YouTube influencers. It includes technical demonstrations of the affiliate tag replacement in browser dev tools.

Dan Olson's 76-minute essay on flat earth belief, built around a hike to a lake to test earth's curvature. It examines the community, how YouTube promoted it, and how it connects to wider conspiracy thinking and QAnon.

Adam Curtis' multi-part documentary on how Freud's ideas and Edward Bernays' public relations shaped consumer culture and political control. It argues that business and government learned to manufacture desires.

A three-minute parody of Adam Curtis's documentary style, assembled from archive footage with his typical narration and leaps of logic.

The first part of Adam Curtis' documentary series on Sigmund Freud and his nephew Edward Bernays, who invented public relations. It shows how Bernays used Freud's ideas to link mass-produced goods to unconscious desires and create modern consumer persuasion.

Ben Anderson's VICE documentary shows embedded reporting on Afghan security forces and US Marines in Helmand during the troop drawdown, exposing incompetence, drug abuse and corruption.

A feature-length documentary on how the City of London and Britain's overseas territories built a global web of offshore secrecy jurisdictions after the empire declined. It traces how this network captured and hid wealth from around the world.

Dan Olson of Folding Ideas investigates the Mikkelsen Twins and the ghostwritten-audiobook passive-income course industry, even playing along with the scheme. It is a long video essay on get-rich-quick publishing grifts.

Seven-minute footage of Fred Rogers testifying before a US Senate subcommittee in 1969 to defend federal funding for the new Corporation for Public Broadcasting. A skeptical Senator Pastore starts out abrasive and is won over during Rogers' brief, calm testimony.

A one-hour 2019 KOMO News documentary hosted by Eric Johnson on Seattle's homelessness and drug crisis, with interviews and looks at proposed solutions including a drug court program in Rhode Island. It argues addiction and mental illness are at the core of the problem.

John Oliver's Last Week Tonight segment on Sinclair Broadcast Group, the largest owner of US local TV stations, and how it injects political content and scripted must-run segments into local news.

A People Make Games follow-up investigation into Roblox, built on stories from players and creators after the channel's first video. It covers the platform's treatment of young developers and its moderation.

Kirby Ferguson's video essay series arguing that creativity is built on copying, transforming and combining existing work. It covers music, film and technology, then turns to copyright and patents.

Dan Olson's roughly two-hour video essay critiques NFTs, cryptocurrency, and Web3, covering their technical, economic, and ideological flaws. It is heavily sourced and ends with the advice to ask whether a project needs crypto to work.

John Oliver's 13-minute Last Week Tonight segment explains the 2014 net neutrality fight over cable companies creating unequal internet speeds. It uses comedy to make a dull regulatory topic engaging and tells viewers how to comment to the FCC.

John Oliver's Last Week Tonight segment on civil asset forfeiture, the process by which police can seize property they suspect is tied to crime. It explains how the property itself is put on trial and how departments profit.

A Last Week Tonight segment on how tobacco companies sustain profits by pushing sales overseas. It covers suits against countries like Australia over plain packaging through trade-deal arbitration.

Lex Fridman interviews Navy pilot David Fravor, a primary witness of the 2004 Tic Tac UFO encounter, about the sighting, military aviation and aerospace engineering. The conversation runs close to four hours.

John Oliver's Last Week Tonight segment explains how data brokers collect and sell personal information, including a stunt in which his team bought data to identify members of Congress.