This may come as a shock to some people, but the media isn't the shining beacon of truth it's been made out to be.

Stop the presses! Heh ... that's a little joke from the newspaper age.

It's bad enough that modern journalists routinely distort facts, feed on hysteria and focus on tragedy. But nowadays the locust swarm of bloggers is doing all that for free. And if all information is free for the taking, then what is the value of said information? You guessed it: Zero.

Now consider cable television. Do we need all those 24-hour news channels? How many crackpot "experts" on swine flu are there? And do they all have blogs? Probably. Staying "informed" has become an ordeal these days, with more people opting for rational ignorance -choosing to ignore it all - than ever.

Whom shall we turn to for help in this mindless morass of media mania? Certainly not newspapers, with their penchant for alliterating while Rome burns.

No - it's the modern stand-up comedians who will save our sanity. They have become what comic Lewis Black calls "the bull**** filtres" of our time, and in doing so, have attained levels of power unimagined in the pre-cable generation. Consider Sen. Al Franken, and on the other side of the floor, would-be senator Dennis Miller. Marvel at the ascent of the many late-night hosts - the news of the day summed up in five-minute monologues - and the success of 'fake news' shows like Jon Stewart's The Daily Show and The Colbert Report, of comic-turned-filmmakers like Bill Maher. And there's more truth in one headline from The Onion than a year of the New York Times.

Performing at the Winspear Centre on Wednesday, Black happens to be one of the finest bull filters in the business. Wherever you find stupidity, you can find this 50-year-old comedian fulminating about it in vein-popping style, which is the image most people know from his apoplectic stints on The Daily Show. He won a Grammy for his anger-fuelled wit in 2007, and the best-selling author is said to be the only writer who can shout in print.

His latest book is Me of Little Faith, an exploration of stupidity in religion.

"The immensity and complexity of the entire universe - these people take this spectacular mystery and make it pedestrian and cliche, and then use it as a hammer," he says.

Stupidity, and therefore comedy, lurk everywhere. And "just because Bush is gone doesn't mean that stupidity has left the country," Black declares. Plenty of inspiration remains. He promises fresh Canadian material at the show. Three words: Creationist science minister. Go get him, tiger.

Black says the success of humorous news commentary is a direct response to a "stupefying" information overload. The late night jokes, he says, "may not be a question of finding the truth, but they can lead you to it. They tell you, this is bull****, all of it's bull****, so take it with a grain of salt."

However, he cautions the public to apply the same standard to the comedians themselves, "Entertainment and politics are different. We're not taking ourselves seriously -- please don't take us seriously."

He adds that he has no political agenda.

"I can get angry about something, but if it's not funny, if it's going nowhere, if I don't get to the joke, I drop it. "We're not there to crusade for everything."

Unless you count fighting bull**** as a crusade.