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The 2000s in America

Stewart, Jon

by Brad C. Southard

Identification: American television personality

Born: November 28, 1962; New York, New York

Jon Stewart, born Jonathan Stuart Leibowitz, made his comedy debut at the Bitter End in New York’s Greenwich Village in 1987 and worked as a stand-up comic, actor, and television writer and host throughout the 1990s. Stewart’s major opportunity came in 1998, when he was asked to take over The Daily Show on Comedy Central, replacing host Craig Kilborn. Stewart, whose name was incorporated into the show’s title in 1999, took the show in a new direction, making it a platform for his critiques on the current state of politics and bias in the news media.

Viewership of The Daily Show increased tremendously during Stewart’s tenure. Stewart effectively used “satire and humor to critique media and politics with a revealing and unabashed honesty, calling attention to hypocrisy in politics and the media and warning viewers of the dangers of taking everything they saw on television at face value. The show garnered a particularly large share of the viewing audience in the thirty-and-under demographic, sparking an interest in political issues in the United States and abroad among those viewers.

As Stewart’s fake news” show began to be taken more seriously, Stewart interviewed powerful figures in the realm of politics and the news media, including presidential candidates and prominent television news journalists. Stewart’s humorous yet intelligent and incisive coverage of such major political events as the 2000 and 2004 presidential elections attracted many young people whom much of American media had previously considered apathetic about political issues. In recognition of its election coverage, The Daily Show received the prestigious Peabody Award for electronic media in 2000 and 2004. Stewart’s mock textbook America (The Book): A Citizen’s Guide to Democracy Inaction, cowritten with the Daily Show writing staff and published just prior to the 2004 election, became a best seller. Stewart continued to cover politics and major events in the United States and elsewhere through the latter half of the decade, hosting The Daily Show and making guest appearances on more traditional news programs on other networks.

Jon Stewart

AUGHTS_StewartJon.jpg

(Department of Defense/Photograph by Air Force Technical Sergeant Adam M. Stump)

Impact

Over the course of his professional career, Stewart evolved from a relatively obscure stand-up comedian into an influential political satirist and media critic. He remained host of The Daily Show into the next decade, continuing to call public attention to news events and covering political events such as the 2012 presidential election.

Further Reading

1 

Baym, Geoffrey. From Cronkite to Colbert: The Evolution of Broadcast News. Boulder: Paradigm, 2010. Print.

2 

Cassino, Dan, and Yasemin Besen-Cassino. Consuming Politics: Jon Stewart, Branding, and the Youth Vote in America. Madison: Fairleigh Dickinson UP, 2009. Print.

3 

Hamm, Theodore. The New Blue Media: How Michael Moore, MoveOn.Org, Jon Stewart, and Company Are Transforming Progressive Politics. New York: New, 2008. Print.

Citation Types

Type
Format
MLA 9th
Southard, Brad C. "Stewart, Jon." The 2000s in America, edited by Craig Belanger, Salem Press, 2013. Salem Online, online.salempress.com/articleDetails.do?articleName=2000_0354.
APA 7th
Southard, B. C. (2013). Stewart, Jon. In C. Belanger (Ed.), The 2000s in America. Salem Press.
CMOS 17th
Southard, Brad C. "Stewart, Jon." Edited by Craig Belanger. The 2000s in America. Hackensack: Salem Press, 2013. Accessed September 18, 2025. online.salempress.com.