Jon in eye of storm
Comedy's Stewart brings takes his rant to '60'
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Sunday evening, Stewart will once again criticize cable news during a segment set to air on the primetime newsmag.
"Fox has the phrase 'fair and balanced' and journalists wring their hands about that," Stewart said in the interview with "60" correspondent Steve Kroft.
"Well, CNN says, 'You can depend on CNN.' Guess what? I watch CNN. No, you can't!"
Segment follows Stewart's tirade against Carlson last week on CNN's political shout-down show "Crossfire," which Carlson co-hosts.
Stewart -- who was in no way kidding around -- told Carlson that cable news has ruined civil discourse and scolded him for not asking the tough questions.
"You know what's interesting, though? You're as big a dick on your show as you are on any show," said Stewart, who hosts the Emmy award-winning "The Daily Show" on Comedy Central.
Carlson said Thursday that he doesn't understand why Stewart is so obsessed with "Crossfire" and CNN.
"I think he's a lot less interesting as a media critic than he is as a comedian. He's a good comedian," Carlson said. "He didn't tell me anything I haven't heard from drunk viewers in airport bars a hundred times."
Stewart is the media darling of the season and has been making a number of TV appearances plugging his bestselling book, "The Daily Show With Jon Stewart Presents America the Book: A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction" (Warner Books).
"60 Minutes" had its interview with Stewart in the hopper more than two weeks ago, but updated the piece in light of the heavy media attention paid this week to the "Crossfire" exchange.
In the "60 Minutes" piece, correspondent Kroft notes that while Stewart makes his living doing fake news, he obviously has real opinions about real news.
"So when he was invited to appear on 'Crossfire' earlier this month, he decided to withhold his humor and provide a little conflict of his own," Kroft narrates before a clip of the Stewart-Carlson battle is shown.
Stewart's appearance drew moderately more viewers to "Crossfire" than usual, about 860,000, but it really gained steam online, where it's been one of the fastest-spreading TV clips ever.
On IFilm.com alone, the 13-minute segment has become the most watched TV segment ever in just six days, with 1.4 million views.
Moreover, that figure doesn't include the peer-to-peer networks where pirated clips of the appearance are ubiquitous and have likely garnered even more downloads. Because CNN isn't allowed to show the clip except through its pay subscription service, hundreds of bloggers chatting about the ruckus have sent their viewers elsewhere, to the skyrocketing number of illicit recordings now online.
(Ben Fritz in Hollywood contributed to this report.)
