Analysis: Jon Stewart's 'The Daily Show' guests were mostly men, and mostly white

By Fusion Staff  |  August 6, 2015 | 8:59pm
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Earlier today, we published our breakdown of how The Daily Show’s 2,000+ guests stacked up by career and by frequency of appearances over the course of Jon Stewart’s turn behind the desk. Right away, many of you noticed something about the latter chart.

When we first compiled the data, we neglected to include data about the guests’ gender and race. It’s been a long afternoon, but we just finished adding that information to the database

If looking at the all-male list of Stewart’s top guests made you think he interviewed a lot more men then women, you were right on the money. Almost exactly 25 percent of his guests were women, compared to 75 percent men.


Our initial chart of Stewart’s top guests accidentally left out Neil deGrasse Tyson, who was a guest on the show 16 times. But even with him in the mix, Stewart overwhelmingly interviewed white people.


To be fair to Stewart, his guest list is probably more of a representation of America’s biases than his own. He mostly interviewed authors, actors, directors, and politicians: These are all areas that still overwhelmingly favor white men.

That doesn’t mean it’s not something Trevor Noah should work on when he takes over.

David Matthews operates the Wayback Machine on Fusion.net—hop on. Got a tip? Email him: [email protected]

Patrick Hogan is a reporter for Fusion based out of New York. E-mail at [email protected].

 
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