Keith Olberman reported on May 1, 2009 on an academic study published by researchers from The Ohio State University, entitled “The Irony of Satire: Political Ideology and the Motivation to See What You Want to See in The Colbert Report.” The study looked at The Colbert Report, the popular “fake news” program, by asking people to view the Colbert segment from Oct. 5, 2006, when Colbert interviewed Amy about her book, Static.

Among the findings, the researchers concluded that participants who were politically conservative were more likely to assume that Stephen Colbert was actually conservative as well, and was merely using humor and satire to advance his conservative views.

Olberman on Colbert Report study:

Download the study (20pp PDF):

Irony_of_Satire

Watch the original Colbert Report interview segment: