Jon Stewart claims Apple wouldn't let him interview FTC chair on his show | Hacker News Reader

Jon Stewart claims Apple wouldn't let him interview FTC chair on his show

axios.com

127 pointsredbell14 comments

Open articleView on HN

It's nice when those with f** you money do actually occasionally say f** you.

> The complaint specifically calls out Apple's dominance as potentially harmful to speech.

I'm sure this incident helped that perception...

Wow! Apple Inc. sure learned the lesson from their Chinese masters.

Not that it'd be much use, but I hope he got that in writing.

I wonder how John Oliver gets away with it.

Different shows with very different tones. Stewart’s Apple show could be considered more “gotcha journalism” than comedy. He is running the risk of embarrassing and really pissing powerful people off.

Oliver uses a lot of hyperbole and comedy which seems to soften the landing of whatever difficult truth he is discussing.

Apple has Apple Pay, a store monopoly, tax dodging (double Irish), stock buybacks, and probably more issues with the FTC. Oliver at HBO isn't trying to be a financial institution.

And he’s only discussing anything if the owners of his show allow him to do so. Same as Stewart I suppose.

They got away with it on Viacom too, often arguing the other side of lawsuits against their employer. Apple is the odd one out.

John Oliver works for Warner Bros Discovery, not Apple.

And the public nor leaders are concerned about WBD's size or influence.

> And the public nor leaders are concerned about WBD's size or influence.

Plenty of people are concerned about consolidation in the media industry. There are ongoing antitrust investigations. https://www.cnbc.com/2024/04/01/warner-bros-discovery-direct...

I don't think that one is so much concerned about consolidation as it is about a clear violation of a specific statute:

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/15/19

The big players are now Apple/Amazon/Netflix/Comcast/Disney/Sony (all with market caps north of $100B).

Far under that comes WBD ($20B), Fox ($14B), Paramount ($8B), and then Lionsgate ($3B). It would be crazy, to me, to go after the latter group for any type of anti trust. What they are buying and selling is also being bought and sold by at least 9 other decent size businesses.

I always thought Oliver is CIA

Don't be silly .. clearly he's GCHQ.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com