John Oliver, host of the news-comedy show, “Last Week Tonight”, would claim to anyone that he’s not a journalist. 

Yet, his show’s segments have been some of the most informative and influential on television. Every time he talks about something that is happening, he’s able to influence people to make a change. Most notably, his call for internet users to comment on internet neutrality.

While these seem to tell great things about Oliver, I think it may tell even more about the state of the media. The tendency for news agencies to regurgitate the same top stories is not only toxic for the news environment, but also for news readers — who’ll think they’re well read but are really only getting a small piece of reality.

The other day, there was a prime example of this on the news: President Barack Obama rejected the construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline. More than 13 articles were written about it, and all of them cite the White House press release that came out the same day and include the same video.

Understandably, certain news reporters may want to give their own insight or keep their unique viewers in the loop on news, but there have been times when the major news sources have offered the same front page story only for an perceptive reader to discover that it was written by the Associated Press.

Why even hire writers if the editorial staff will copy from Associated Press, especially since they have their own website and are publishing on their own channels?

The reason that Oliver has been garnering so much attention is that, like the new college-popular Vice News, Oliver talks about a topic that no one else is going to talk about. He talks about persistent problems and problems that are not only absurd in their nature but are also fairly easy to solve.

Perhaps the only difference from Vice is that Oliver’s research team spends the entire week preparing whereas Vice or one of the major networks may spend the night so that they can release their news faster than the other networks.

But no matter the justifications, I think it’s ultimately worse for everyone when news production gets lazy so that a copy-paste story is published. It’s not like there isn’t more to talk about than the murder mystery that’s going to be solved three hours later.