Jon Stewart is hot to talk about the media’s wildly partisan and manipulative tendencies. Members of that media … not so much.
Stewart blasted the industry that gainfully employed him for decades during a Tuesday appearance on “The Howard Stern Show,” telling the host that despite numerous requests, not a single “newsroom leader” would agree to an on-the-record interview or his Apple TV+ show “The Problem With Jon Stewart.”
“We tried very hard to get a person who runs a news division now to come on the show, to speak publicly. They all turned us down,” Stewart said. “These are people who run news organizations. People that their business model relies on access and transparency.”
Access, transparency, and hypocrisy – if you ask the former “Daily Show” host.
“If you work in an industry where the reason for being is to find out the truth and illuminate the dark corners and to expose corruption … and yet you yourself will not come on and allow that same scrutiny to be applied to you,” Stewart lamented. “F—ing incredible.”
Stewart said he’s learned the hard way how bureaucracies shelter the leaders of organizations – even the organizations whose mission it is to expose how bureaucracies shelter the leaders of organizations.
“When you ask them to defend their product and their business model … and we even did Zoom calls with a couple of them … to explain what we were trying to do and what we wanted to talk about,” Stewart said, “they would all say, ‘Let me run it up the chain.’ I’m not sure where that chain ends but I’m sure it’s up somebody’s ass. None of them would appear!”