Oliver's show is perfect format for a Wikipedia story, he gets right into the guts of an issue, and it is always something that really matters, but has been overlooked by the 24 hour news cycle. I can't say I have given this a lot of thought, some random French guy gave me the idea for it tonight, but on first impressions, it has to be the fraud that is Jess Wade.
Oliver always needs a hook, and that would have to be the whole Kit Chapman / Clarice Phelps affair and this claims she is the 'first' black woman to make Gold or whatever, an accessible issue for the uninitiated because people just making shit up and putting it on Wikipedia and then insisting it is true you just have to take their word for it, is a story everyone has heard. He prefers topicality, but also likes persistence, and it doesn't come much more topical and persistent than Wade's agenda.
He needs authority figures to lambast, and in their own way, Wikipedia has plenty. He also needs a couple of idiots he can put in front of a camera and make fools of with carefully crafted questions, and if Wade can't be persuaded (I think shyness is literally the only reason she would say no) there are plenty of Wikipediots who would sit in for her. He needs humour, both laugh out loud funny stuff but also laugh then cringe then die a little inside at this being what the world has become type stuff, and both are certainly present in spades in Wade's work.
In his best pieces, he also likes to show the problem has been noticed by some who have tried to remedy it, but whose efforts have failed because authority/bureaucracy/stupidity, and we got that. By necessity his pieces always require serious research, and what better thing to research than Wikipedia? It's all there, on permanent public record.
That only leaves the ethical question - is she a legitimate target. As Oliver has said in one episode, he does take great care in not using his platform to disproportionately light up someone who doesn't deserve it, but I think there is more than enough evidence to show Wade isn't in the situation she is in by accident, that she has had plenty of chances to reflect and reconsider, and she has not. It may be cruel to use her as a scapegoat, but the flipside is she's happy to portray herself as an example, a PR mouthpiece, an activist, defiant in the face of all critics. He loves that.
How could he refuse? It's TV Gold I tell ya.
