Jon Stewart says NBC and CNN won't let their reporters come on his podcast

Jon Stewart—whose resurgence into the public spotlight has been one of the less irritating pop culture developments of the last couple of years—has said that NBC and CNN won’t let its reporters or pundits go on his podcast to talk about the issues of the day. Per Deadline, Stewart made this allegation on said podcast, The Weekly Show, Stewart’s Comedy Central-produced accompaniment to his one-day-a-week hosting stint at The Daily Show.

According to Stewart, several reporters from both networks have responded favorably to requests to come on his show and talk with him about his usual obsessions, politics and the way the media covers them. But when The Weekly Show producers reached out to the network themselves to okay the bookings, they’ve been “politely declined” without explanation. “I would think it’s an embarrassment to those news organizations,” Stewart said on the podcast, dismissing possibilities that NBC is trying to avoid accusations of political bias by noting that “I mean, they have MSNBC.” (Whether it’s a matter of the podcast being a production of Paramount, and associated with a specific Comedy Central program, wasn’t directly addressed.)

Stewart has, of course, never shied away from calling out corporate overlords, either his own, or those of others; he previously got into a series of fights with Apple—which eventually led to the end of his TV show The Problem With Jon Stewart—over topics like his desire to talk to people like FTC chair Lina Khan. His return to his pulpit at Comedy Central has been a ratings hit for the network, even as the show continues to hunt around to some day find a new permanent host.