In contrast to Daily Show, which acts as a news program with a satirical and humorous edge, the Colbert Report

is designed around the Colbert character, focusing on his feelings and opinions about stories rather than the stories themselves. In his first episode of The Colbert Report, Colbert introduced one of his most popular recurring segments, The Wrd. In the segment, Colbert introduces a word or phrase and explains how it encapsulates the issue he is discussing, while bullet points on a graphic on the right side of the screen mock and satirize the points he is making. On the first episode, The Wrd was Truthiness. Colbert reflected that when writing the first episode, the word was going to be truth, but Colbert suggested that it wasnt a proper word for what they were trying to describe, and made up the word truthiness instead though the word existed under a different definition before Colbert adopted it for his own purposes, he has said he pulled it out of [my] keister. Colbert defined truthiness as a subjective, personal reality, the reality that we want to exist based on ones opinions and feelings, rather than the objective reality that exists based on facts. As an example of this, Colbert claimed that, while intelligence data did not support the idea that Saddam Hussein was a threat to the United States and there was no evidence that he had a hand in the attack on the World Trade Center, doesnt taking out Saddam feel like the right thing to do? Truthiness came to be hailed as a defining word for the times. It was named 2005s Word of the Year by the American Dialect Association, and 2006s Word of the Year by Merriam Webster. Colbert later explained that the problem with truthiness is that, while it sounds absurd when the meaning is explained, many in the United States hold to that type of belief system, giving their feelings and opinions greater value than facts, and twisting facts to suit their opinions.

Colbert later expanded truthiness to include the term Wikiality, inspired by the website Wikipedia. Under Colberts definitions of Wikiality and Truthiness, because anyone can edit Wikipedia and Wikipedia is an encyclopedia, anything that a person believes can be made true by editing Wikipedia to state that belief, and if enough people agree their edit is valid, that belief will remain on Wikipedia and be presented as fact. Colbert has since often called upon viewers to vandalize Wikipedia, adding content with the intent of changing facts, and many pages on Wikipedia have been locked from editing due to Colbert mentioning the topic. The idea of Wikiality has become another part of the Colbert character, Colbert deciding he believes something because other people believe it, therefore it must be true. As an example, Colbert has said that once he did not think global warming was real, but after Al Gores An Inconvenient Truth was successful in theaters, he changed his mind and now believes it must exist, joking the market has spoken.