Here is an interesting story/video of the German late night show “Harald Schmidt” which I already mentioned in my presentation.
In mid-September one of the contributors of the show started contacting news networks, newsdesks and newspapers claiming that he is a social outcast since he was diagnosed with the H1N1 virus. The actor and comedian did not actually contract the virus at any point. He told the various journalists stories about how his doctor did not want to treat him and about how he was afraid of more people finding out about his illness (!).
A lot of the jurnalists covering the suppsoedy real story obviously did not do much fact-checking and just trusted the person confessing to them in a time when the Swine Flu scare reached a new high since the one this spring.
A lot of the shows ran apologies the day after that episode of “Harald Schmidt” aired, promising to chek their facts better in the future.
So, as we see, humor can also expose things going wrong in the media and society in general.
