How Jon Stewart may have helped the DOJ’s fight with Apple

The Justice Department’s antitrust lawsuit against Apple may have gotten an unexpected boost this week from comedian Jon Stewart, who revealed Monday that the tech giant previously urged him not to interview Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan.

During an interview with Khan on the “The Daily Show,” Stewart said he tried to book her for an interview while he was working for Apple as a show and podcast host, but the company “literally said please don’t talk to her.”

He added: “I didn’t think they cared for you is what happened.”

FTC spokesman Douglas Farrar said Stewart’s staff contacted the agency in late 2022 about an interview on how market concentration impacts inflation, but the talks abruptly broke down. When Stewart returned to Comedy Central, his team quickly booked Khan. Apple declined to comment.

Antitrust advocates say Stewart’s disclosure could help federal enforcers make their case that Apple is leveraging its alleged smartphone monopoly to exert power over other markets, including by pushing to stifle content in streaming and podcasts.

The Justice Department along with 16 state and district attorneys general last month accused Apple of using restrictive policies to lock in consumers and box out competitors across a broad suite of products, with the aim of building a “moat around its smartphone monopoly.”

The lawsuit alleged that “Apple’s conduct extends beyond just monopoly profits and even affects the flow of speech,” including by “rapidly expanding its role as a TV and movie producer.”

Apple spokesman Fred Sainz said at the time that the lawsuit is “wrong on the facts and the law” and that the company “will vigorously defend against it.”

American Economic Liberties Project senior counsel Lee Hepner, whose left-leaning advocacy group pushes for stricter antitrust enforcement, called Stewart’s remarks “a useful illustration of the breadth of Apple’s power” and how it uses that clout to “pick winners and losers across markets.”

“Apple has leveraged its control over a key gateway to market entry, the iPhone, to dictate and constrain what innovation is allowed and, as we heard last night, what kind of speech it will tolerate,” he said.

But Jennifer Huddleston, a research fellow at libertarian think tank the Cato Institute, argued that Stewart’s comments alone are not “sufficient to show any evidence of anti-competitive behavior on Apple’s part.”

“Just as consumers make different choices about the content they choose to consume, content creators like Stewart make different choices where they choose to produce their content,” she said. Huddleston called streaming “a highly competitive market.”

The Justice Department’s antitrust chief, Jonathan Kanter, has previously criticized market concentration more broadly as “particularly concerning in markets related to the flow of news and information that impact political discourse.”

“When appropriate, antitrust enforcement can protect competition in these markets, which are vital to the free exchange of information, news, and ideas, and to a healthy and functioning democracy,” Kanter said in response to written questions during his confirmation process.

The Justice Department declined on Tuesday to comment on the Stewart remarks.

While the FTC is not leading the Apple lawsuit, Khan publicly thanked Stewart online for having her on to discuss “how monopolies can use their power to bully, coerce, and censor speech.”

The episode also drew rare bipartisan concern over the potential for tech companies to stifle speech, a topic that has typically been polarized in Washington.

“When corporate monopolies like Apple abuse their dominance to muzzle critics, they endanger our democracy as well as our economy,” Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) told The Technology 202.

Mark Meador, an antitrust lawyer and former aide to Sen. Mike Lee (R-Utah), said the Stewart saga “supports what conservatives have been saying about Big Tech censorship, that it’s not just about our specific views.”

“A corporation powerful enough to silence conservatives is powerful enough to shut out liberal views as well. Power of that nature and magnitude is a threat to all,” he added.

Meador disclosed that his law firm represents Apple complainants but declined to comment further.

Stewart launched his Apple show in 2021, but it ended two years later amid disputes over show topics on China and artificial intelligence, the New York Times reported.

Stewart, whose TV episode on Monday largely focused on the “false promises of AI,” appeared to confirm those tensions during his interview with Khan.

“They wouldn’t let us do even that dumb thing we just did … on AI,” he said. “What is that sensitivity? Why are they so afraid to even have those conversations out in the public sphere?”

“I think it just shows one of the dangers of what happens when you concentrate so much power and so much decision-making in a small number of companies,” Khan replied.