John Oliver's Achilles heel

How fair sport campaigners used his own tactics against him

The ‘John Oliver’ effect is so strong it has its own Wikipedia section. Manifested through a ‘scathing, stick it to ‘em’ style, he’s credited with shifting public opinion and policies. But what he’s really, really best at, is raising awareness. His shows are much more likely to affect the news churn on certain topics than regular news and current affairs programming.

His influence is disproportionate to the size of his audience, even though his show sees ‘exceptional’ demand and is considered a leading HBO asset. It’s because of the response it provokes elsewhere - as we saw with his latest item on male athletes in women’s sport (and its follow up) which triggered dozens of international headlines, articles, columns and responses across legacy and social media.

But his personal popularity measures at about half the level of his fame, even among the fervently progressive millennial cohort. And your greatest strength is often your greatest weakness. Oliver’s power to generate discourse looks likely to turn this episode into an own goal by a trans ally. Not a spectacular own goal, but one which could turn out to be more helpful than not. In this case, the John Oliver effect is becoming a version of the Isla Bryson effect, without the penis leggings and the rape conviction. It’s a lesson for self-congratulatory hawkers of news-lite ‘comedy’ everywhere.

The instant and furious social media response reached beyond gender critical algorithms - but more - the obvious injustice of his commentary and silly, activist ‘fact-checking’ meant that even traditionally TQ+ sympathetic legacy outlets have been wary. Just two of this week’s headlines have been Oliver-positive, and the Guardian buried its approval in a column which led off on tariffs. CNN likes John Oliver stories - it didn’t like this one, despite being nominally a perfect opportunity to hammer home its gender affirmative agenda.

None of the trans-positive US TV stations liked it - one of the biggest US media stories of the week, with plenty of fresh pegs and supposedly a significant reality check opportunity on a subject close to their hearts. They know they aren’t on safe ground. Even TQ+ loving Hollywood Reporter gave headline prominence to JK Rowling’s comment - ‘Read the f’ing room’.

Many outlets have been unequivocally contemptuous - but more importantly, one or two well-read outlets have done to John Oliver what he’s supposed to excel at doing to other people, and debunked him.

Oliver brought into the open those empty gender identity activist arguments which all boil down to ‘Why does it even matter? Pfft’. Wide, wide open. There’ve been two particular and impressive achievements of trans advocacy in the media. The first - it’s been able to frame every gender identity story about the disbenefit to women (and children) as a niche story, and every broken nail of a trans person as a headline tragedy. The second is the ‘no debate’ tactic, which has evolved into ‘no debate except on right-wing outlets’ - guilt by association.

That means your regular news consumer, who isn’t strongly invested, is still not well armed with facts and figures when faced with claims that ‘trans people’ are a tiny, marginalised population, uniquely in need of sympathy and support - even if they feel uneasy about it. Campaigners deep in the heat of battle sometimes don’t register quite how meagre is the hard information that leaks out to legacy media consumers.

Oliver’s sniggering has blown that up. The Daily Mail, with around 70m visits a month from US readers, conducted its own fact check, published a huge picture of trans-identified David/Dee Brent, with his ridiculous handbag and trophy, and actually sent its readers to Wolf, the Women’s Liberation Front website - not once, but twice. For good measure, it also sent them to Reem Alsalem’s UN report on violence against women, with its stats from shewon.org. These are places mainstream media doesn’t normally go. And in a thorough debunk, it informed them that all those SheWon statistics are sound.

Outkick - which has seen ‘massive’ growth in the US in the last year - offered two fact checks as it roundly mocked Oliver and his ‘entirely nauseating diatribe’. It dismantles every one of Oliver/Brent’s claims. The instinctive discomfort most people feel about men in women’s sport has been tooled up with an arsenal of facts and figures to take into their everyday conversations and the perfect excuse to talk about it. And there’s been only trace media coverage in support of his dodgy claims.

John Oliver won’t be harmed in the short-term, as contrariness brings its own rewards. In the long-term, trust in his fact-checking team will be degraded, not least because another of his weapons has been used against him - the beautiful joy of transparency. The social media response was ahead of the game - both Reem Alsalem and Wolf previewed their concern and responses, with Wolf also publishing Brent’s press inquiry.

Many outlets had already highlighted the conjunction with the UK women’s pool final in which two men fought it off (given a neat boost by some fuming from Piers Morgan). It is always easier to do than to undo: these revelations after the fact would have looked defensive, and have had much less impact. Transparency, accuracy, and debunking were all supposed to be on Oliver’s side, until they weren’t. The only person on the back foot now is Oliver himself.

The most pernicious form of media bias is still silence and omission. Comment, and you give us an excuse to wheel out the facts. Ignore us, and we’re left shouting at each other. Compare this storm to an innocuous little item on BBC Radio 4’sPM this week.

It was intended to analyse the future of diversity policies in the workplace. Two guests and Evan Davis spent ten minutes discussing whether Donald Trump’s actions were leading a rowback on DEI in the UK. New to the story? You won’t know that UK employers have been pulling away for year from ‘diversity’ groups like Stonewall because of controversy and legal weakness around its discrimination advice. Nor would you understand the significance of multiple UK tribunal cases which are costing employers millions of pounds in compensation and legal fees.

It didn’t mention them at all. This quietness is how the policies became embedded in the first place. It’s the primary tool of the gender identity activist, and it’s still dangerous and worrying. On John Oliver, the activism broke cover and stood in the daylight, like a naked town crier calling attention to his vulnerability. It was a rude, insulting, mendacious and thoroughly contemptible show. But now thousands more people know the activists are wrong, and - of vital importance - they know why.

We wish he hadn’t done it. But campaigners for fairness and accuracy have turned it round, and are finally seeing off this terrible era of smug, snickering complacency on women’s rights - not quite the intended outcome. We have to make sure gender identity activists don’t retreat further into silence as a result.