“...while Colbert wrote in the back seat of the Comedy Central Car, Media spun out of control. Back when Colbert was working Second City weird comedians had little competition. TV news seemed sane, its anchors staid, and the greying men behind the desk considered themselves journalists, not entertainers. In those final pre-Web years, newspapers were mostly reliable, free of the cluttered competition of websites, tweets and blogs. But a decade later with 24-7 cable spreading, and every poll and pundit saying whatever it took to get attention, the comic could scarcely be more outrageous than the media circus. As the age of Fox News and the Drudge Report dawned, opinion replaced fact, rumor was treated as truth, and no conspiracy, however trivial or trumped up, went unnoticed.”