Technology

Thanks!

When Stewart started his show on Apple TV, I was interested, because I figure he wouldn't have gone there unless he had some assurances about being able to do whatever he wanted. And in some ways, the show seemed to be produced in a way that backed up that guess. It seemed pretty serious and not too concerned with ensuring ratings/engagement, and resulted in some awesome interviews from Stewart (better journalism than anything he's doing on the Daily Show AFAICT, though I haven't seen this interview).

I figured for Apple it made business sense to sell themselves as a media business that enables high quality content including some freedom of press values. I figured that they thought through how to distance themselves as a tech company from any views they disliked from their TV product, so long as people paid the subscriptions.

Of course, that they couldn't help themselves is of no surprise to anyone. The real surprise was that the show happened in the first place, and it'd be interesting to know if there was a struggle within Apple about the whole thing.

In the end though, the whole thing IMO is a good lesson in how news/journalism cannot be mixed with conflicting interests, at all.

It's really good that the story is being spoken about too by Stewart having first hand experience of how it went down ... because these sorts of interests are all over the industry and really need to be addressed.