Jon Stewart Says That Traditional TV News Is Icing Him Out

Now that the lame-stream liberal media is trying to cut Jon Stewart out of the national conversation, will Fox News give him a streaming series?

When Stewart returned to his old haunt at The Daily Show for a part-time, once-weekly hosting gig, he brought some of the habits he learned during his brief and corporate-unfriendly stint at AppleTV+ with him to his Comedy Central comeback. In addition to the silver stubble and wizened wit that is in stark contrast to the characteristically youthful feel of Stewart’s early days at The Daily Show, Stewart also insisted that the comedy news institution assist him in continuing his burgeoning podcast career with The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart, a less joke-heavy, more conversational companion piece to his Monday night Daily Show episodes.

However, as was the case when Stewart left Apple and The Problem with Jon Stewart, The Daily Show’s all-time greatest host and his side project have run afoul of the corporate interests that dominate the media. As such, national news outlets have apparently prohibited the prominent media figures in their employ from speaking to Stewart. As Stewart claimed on a recent episode of The Weekly Show, NBC and CNN “refuse to allow their reporters to come on a podcast to talk about the issues of the day.”

“I would think it’s an embarrassment to those news organizations,” Stewart lambasted NBC and CNN in the opening statements of his latest podcast episode, saying that the stonewalling that The Weekly Show experiences whenever they attempt to invite a prominent TV journalist from the two stations is “unlike anything I’ve really ever seen.” 

Stewart claims that, upon personally inviting certain pundits to discuss the chosen subject of a Weekly Show episode, those unnamed newscasters expressed their eagerness to speak with Stewart on the record before their networks "politely decline” the invitation. “Let that sink in for just a a moment,” Stewart insisted. “Organizations that rely on access and transparency refuse to allow their reporters to come on the podcast to talk about the issues of the day. How is it possible that a news organization would not feel shame and bewilderment at using the techniques of obfuscation that they rail against from politicians and public figures?”

“This is NBC. I mean they have MSNBC,” Stewart railed. “We had the same problem with CNN. They gave us a bunch of shit for trying to bring somebody on. Like, it’s bonkers, and it makes no sense.”

Sadly, Stewart is no stranger to such corporate intervention stopping him from interviewing experts on the topics that affect all Americans — Apple famously banned him from interviewing FTC chair and anti-monopoly expert Lina Khan on the topic of artificial intelligence and the illegal practices that are commonplace among companies developing such “innovations.” 

Presumably, MSNBC’s reasoning for preventing their talent from talking to Stewart about important issues is the same justification behind Apple's moratorium — what’s best for the public isn’t what’s best for their boardroom. Thankfully, Stewart’s shows haven’t yet clashed with Comedy Central’s business interests, as he hasn’t yet decided that airing 13 hours of The Office reruns every day isn’t a threat to our democracy.