Stephen Colbert forms a "dark money" group
Leading up to the last presidential election, the faux conservative host of The Colbert Report created a super PAC and a secretive dark money group on his show.
Viewers who saw those satirical Colbert segments were significantly better informed about the role of money in politics than viewers of any other news show or news channels, according to the Annenberg Public Policy Center at the University of Pennsylvania. Its study, called "Stephen Colbert's Civics Lesson," was published online today in the journal Mass Communication and Society.
The parody bits were prompted by the Supreme Courts Citizens United ruling, which equated spending money with free speech. The ruling allows corporations and unions to spend as much as they want to influence the results of elections.
Colberts super PAC, the ridiculously named Americans for a Better Tomorrow, Tomorrow, was created on air with the help of the former chairman of the Federal Election Commission, Trevor Potter, who provided extensive on-air legal advice with a broad smile.
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