Jon Stewart, the comedian who turned Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show” into a sharp-edged nightly commentary on news events, the people behind them and the media that reports (and sometimes misreports) them, said on Tuesday that he would step down from the program after more than 15 years as its anchor.
Mr. Stewart disclosed his plans to depart “The Daily Show” during a taping of the program on Tuesday. His announcement was confirmed by Comedy Central, which said in a statement that he would “remain at the helm of ‘The Daily Show’ until later this year.”
Mr. Stewart, 52, became the host of “The Daily Show” in 1999, entering with the identity of a hard-working standup, if not necessarily known as an astute political commentator.
A decade and a half later, his satirical sensibility helped turn “The Daily Show,” where he also serves as an executive producer, into an influential platform for news and media commentary, both in the United States and around the world. Under his direction, the program has been a humorous release valve for politically frustrated (often left-leaning) viewers and a bête-noir of (often right-leaning) critics who see too much collusion between politics and the fourth estate.
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Elizabeth Warren · @elizabethformaWashington is rigged for the big guys – and no person has more consistently called them out for it than Jon Stewart. Good luck, Jon!
As recently as Monday night on the show, Mr. Stewart had been taking aim at the recent scandal that has engulfed the NBC news anchor Brian Williams, casting him as a journalist with a propensity for personal exaggeration and commenting on failure of the news media to more thoroughly question the underpinnings of the Iraq War.
Speaking of Mr. Williams, a frequent “Daily Show” guest who on Tuesday was suspended without pay for six months, Mr. Stewart said: “See, I see the problem. We got us a case here of infotainment confusion syndrome. It occurs when the celebrity cortex gets its wires crossed with the medulla anchor-dala.”
Noting the widespread media coverage of Mr. Williams’s woes, Mr. Stewart wryly added, “Finally someone is being held to account for misleading America about the Iraq War.”
Created by Lizz Winstead and Madeleine Smithberg, “The Daily Show” had its debut in 1996 with Craig Kilborn, the former “SportsCenter” anchor, gaining some buzz for its mixture of “Weekend Update”-style news-driven comedy and Mr. Kilborn’s sarcastic celebrity interviews.