[UPDATE] - Stewart slammed Fox News on Monday night's episode of 'The Daily Show' for editing his interview with Wallace. Watch the clip here.
[ORIGINAL STORY] - The Daily Show's Jon Stewart entered the proverbial lion's den, appearing live on Fox News Sunday to debate "media bias" with host Chris Wallace.
Early in the interview, Wallace flashed a previous quote of Stewart's calling Fox News a "relentless agenda-driven 24 hour news opinion propaganda delivery system," and asked Stewart, "Where do you come up with this stuff?"
Stewart responded, "Uh, it's actually quite easy."
Later, when Wallace argued that a clip about Sarah Palin from the Daily Show was political commentary, Stewart told Wallace, "You're insane... Here's the difference between you and I. I'm a comedian first. My comedy is informed by an ideological background, there's no question about that. But the thing that you will never understand...is that Hollywood, yeah, they're liberal, but that's not their primary motivating force. I'm not an activist. I am a comedian."
"Do I want my voice heard?" Stewart continued later. "Absolutely, that's why I got into comedy. Am I an activist, in your mind? A partisan ideological activist?" Wallace responded, "Yeah." "Okay, then I disagree with you," Stewart said. "You can't understand, because of the world that you live in, that there is not a designed ideological agenda on my part to affect partisan change because that's the soup you swim in. And I appreciate that, I understand it. It reminds me of in ideological regimes, they can't understand that there is free media other places because they receive marching orders."
However, it was in a later exchange that Stewart got actually angry at Wallace, as he talked about what he called the misinformation that Fox News gave its viewers.
"The embarrassment is that I'm given credibility in this world because of the disappointment that the public has in what the news media does," he said.
"I don't think our viewers are the least bit disappointed with us," Wallace said. "I think our viewers think, finally, they're getting somebody who tells the other side of the story."
"Who are the most consistently misinformed media viewers?" Stewart shot back, his voice rising. "The most consistently misinformed? Fox, Fox viewers, consistently, every poll."
Watch highlights of the interview:
Watch the full, unedited interview:
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