Here is a news article: AUCKLAND, New Zealand—The New Zealand spy agency, the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB), worked in 2012 and 2013 to implement a mass metadata surveillance system even as top government officials publicly insisted no such program was being planned and would not be legally permitted.

 Documents provided by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden show that the government worked in secret to exploit a new internet surveillance law enacted in the wake of revelations of illegal domestic spying to initiate a new metadata collection program that appeared designed to collect information about the communications of New Zealanders. Those actions are in direct conflict with the assurances given to the public by Prime Minister John Key (pictured above), who said the law was merely designed to fix “an ambiguous legal framework” by expressly allowing the agency to do what it had done for years, that it “isn’t and will never be wholesale spying on New Zealanders,” and the law “isn’t a revolution in the way New Zealand conducts its intelligence operations.”

 Snowden, in a post for The Intercept published today, accused Prime Minster Key of fundamentally misleading the public about GCSB’s role in mass surveillance. “The Prime Minister’s claim to the public, that ‘there is no and there never has been any mass surveillance’, is false,” the former NSA analyst wrote. “The GCSB, whose operations he is responsible for, is directly involved in the untargeted, bulk interception and algorithmic analysis of private communications sent via internet, satellite, radio, and phone networks.”

 Snowden explained that “at the NSA, I routinely came across the communications of New Zealanders in my work with a mass surveillance tool we share with GCSB, called ‘X KEYSCORE.”” He further detailed that “the GCSB provides mass surveillance data into XKEYSCORE. They also provide access to the communications of millions of New Zealanders to the NSA at facilities such as the GCSB facility in Waihopai, and the Prime Minister is personally aware of this fact.”

 Top secret documents provided by the whistleblower demonstrate that the GCSB, with ongoing NSA cooperation, implemented Phase I of the mass surveillance program code-named “Speargun” at some point in 2012 or early 2013. “Speargun” involved the covert installation of “cable access” equipment, which appears to refer to surveillance of the country’s main undersea cable link, the Southern Cross cable. This cable carries the vast majority of internet traffic between New Zealand and the rest of the world, and mass collection from it would mark the greatest expansion of GCSB spying activities in decades.

 Upon completion of the first stage, Speargun moved to Phase II, under which “metadata probes” were to be inserted into those cables. The NSA documents note that the first such metadata probe was scheduled for “mid-2013.” Surveillance probes of this sort are commonly used by NSA and their partners to tap into huge flows of information from communication cables in real time, enabling them to extract the dates, times, senders, and recipients of emails, phone calls, and the like. The technique is almost by definition a form of mass surveillance; metadata is relatively useless for intelligence purposes without a massive amount of similar data to analyze it against and trace connections through.

 The NSA declined to comment for this story. A GCSB spokesperson would only say: “We don’t comment on matters that may or may not be operational.”

 Over the weekend, in anticipation of this report, Key admitted for the first time that the GCSB did plan a program of mass surveillance aimed at his own citizens, but claimed that he ultimately rejected the program before implementation. Yesterday, after The Intercept sought comment from the NSA, the Prime Minister told reporters in Auckland that this reporting was referring merely to “a proposed widespread cyber protection programme that never got off the ground.” He vowed to declassify documents confirming his decision.

 But the documents indicate that Speargun was not just an idea that stalled at the discussion stage. It was a system GCSB actively worked to implement. One top secret 2012 NSA document states: “Project Speargun underway.” Another top secret NSA document discussing the activities of its surveillance partners reports, under the heading “New Zealand,” that “Partner cable access program achieves Phase I.”

 Critically, the NSA documents note in more than one place that completion of Speargun was impeded by one obstacle: The need to enact a new spying law that would allow the GCSB, for the first time, to spy on its own citizens as well as legal residents of the country. As one NSA planning document put it, completion of Speargun was “awaiting new GCSB Act expected July 2013.”

 That legislation arose after it was revealed in 2012 that the GCSB illegally surveilled the communications of Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom, a legal resident of New Zealand. New Zealand law at the time forbade the GCSB from using its surveillance apparatus against citizens or legal residents. That illegal GCSB surveillance of Dotcom was followed by a massive military-style police raid by New Zealand authorities on his home in connection with Dotcom’s criminal prosecution in the United States for copyright violations.

 A subsequent government investigation found that the GCSB not only illegally spied on Dotcom but also dozens of other citizens and legal residents. The deputy director of GCSB resigned. The government’s response to these revelations was to refuse to prosecute those who ordered the illegal spying and, instead, to propose a new law that would allow domestic electronic surveillance.

 That proposal was intensely controversial, prompting large public protests and a concerted campaign against the law. One news broadcaster called it “one of the most polarizing pieces of legislation in recent times.” It was of sufficient interest to the NSA that in March 2013, the director of Prime Minister Key’s Intelligence Coordination Group traveled to NSA headquarters to offer an update on the legislation.

 To assuage the public, Key and other top officials repeatedly insisted that the real purpose of the law was merely to provide oversight and to clarify that targeted domestic surveillance which had long been carried out by the agency was legal. Key categorically denied that the law would allow mass metadata collection on the New Zealand public: “There have been claims this Bill offers no protection of metadata and allows for wholesale collection of metadata without a warrant. None of that is true.”

 Key told the public that the new law would not permit mass, warrantless metadata surveillance: “So when the GCSB wants to access metadata, it is treated with the same level of seriousness and protection as if the GCSB was accessing the actual content of a communication. And there are protections around that.”

 In response to Key’s claims, legal experts extensively documented that the new law would indeed provide “a major increase in the overall role and powers of the GCSB” and would allow the “very broad ‘wholesale’ powers” which Key denied. Yet the Key government, and the prime minister himself, steadfastly insisted that the law permits no mass surveillance. At one point, Key even promised to resign if it were found that the GCSB were engaging in mass surveillance.

 Based on Key’s assurances, the New Zealand Parliament narrowly voted to enact the new law on August 21 of last year, by a vote of 61-59. Immediately prior to passage, Key acknowledged that the new law has “‘alarmed’ some people but blame[d] the Government’s opponents for stoking their fears” and again “rejected that by writing into law what the GCSB had already been doing meant an extension of its powers.”

 But in high-level discussions between the Key government and the NSA, the new law was clearly viewed as the crucial means to empower the GCSB to engage in metadata surveillance. On more than one occasion, the NSA noted internally that Project Speargun, in the process of being implemented, could not and would not be completed until the new law was enacted. The NSA apparently viewed that new law as providing exactly the powers that Key repeatedly and publicly denied it would vest.

 New Zealand’s national election will be held on September 20. Over the last several weeks, Key has been embroiled in a scandal that saw a top minister resign, after independent journalist Nicky Hager published a book, Dirty Politics, documenting ties between Key officials and a right-wing blogger known for attacking public figures and showing that Key officials declassified information for political purposes.

 Revelations of illegal GCSB spying prompted the creation of the anti-surveillance Internet Party, which formed an alliance with the left-wing, indigenous Mana Party and is predicted to win several seats in Parliament. The party is funded by Dotcom, and has organized a “Moment of Truth” event for this Monday to discuss revelations of surveillance and other secret government actions. (Disclosure: Glenn Greenwald, one of the authors of this story, is scheduled to speak at that event pursuant to an invitation from the Internet Party, which paid his travel expenses to attend and agreed to donate a speaking fee to a designated charity.)

 The disclosure that the GCSB plotted a program of mass surveillance based on this new law is likely to raise further questions about the ethics and credibility of the Key government. The new surveillance planning took place at high levels of the government, and expressly intended to use the new surveillance law as its basis even as Key himself insisted that the law provided no such authority.

 Photo: Rob Griffith/AP

 Additional reporting provided by Andrew Fishman ||||| Accused government whistleblower Edward Snowden is seen on the computer screen of a journalist on the internet site of the Council of Europe, as he speaks via video conference with members of the Committee on legal Affairs and Human Rights of the Parliamentary Assembly of...

 WELLINGTON New Zealand was preparing to conduct mass domestic surveillance last year, a U.S. investigative journalist said on Monday, five days before the country goes to the polls, provoking immediate denials from Prime Minister John Key.

 The accusations by Glenn Greenwald were based on evidence disclosed by former U.S. National Security Authority contractor Edward Snowden that Key's center-right government planned to exploit amended spying laws to sharply widen domestic spying.

 Greenwald said the NSA documents showed New Zealand's electronic spy agency took the first steps towards the surveillance in a project dubbed 'Speargun', by tapping into an undersea telecoms cable into the country, while waiting for the legal authority to do so.

 "Phase one entailed accessing that cable, tapping into it, and then phase two would entail metadata probes," Greenwald said on Radio New Zealand National.

 Key rejected the charges as "absolutely wrong", and said a business case put up by the agency, the Government Communications Security Bureau (GCSB), early last year aimed at mass cyber protection, but was turned down by his government.

 "There is not, and never has been, a cable access surveillance program operating in New Zealand," Key said in a statement, as he released several declassified papers to back his position.

 "There is not, and never has been, mass surveillance of New Zealanders undertaken by the GCSB."

 Snowden's material can be accessed at: here

 New Zealand law provides that the GCSB, which conducts electronic surveillance and is part of the "Five Eyes" surveillance network along with the United States, Britain, Australia, and Canada, can only spy on New Zealand citizens if requested by a domestic law enforcement or intelligence agency.

 Key said Greenwald, who was brought to New Zealand by millionaire internet entrepreneur Kim Dotcom, was being used to try to influence voters ahead of the election.

 Dotcom, who is fighting extradition to the United States on charges of internet piracy, copyright breaches, and money laundering, has paid for Greenwald's trip to New Zealand.

 Greenwald appeared at a public meeting of more than 1,000 people organized by a political party being bankrolled by Dotcom, at which the ebullient German had promised revelations damaging to Key.

 Snowden and Wikileaks founder Julian Assange addressed the meeting through video links.

 New Zealand media said the revelations involved an alleged email between a Warner Brothers film studio executive and the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), suggesting Key colluded with them to allow Dotcom to settle in New Zealand so that it would be easier to detain and extradite him.

 Warner Brothers and the MPAA said the email was a fake, and Key said he made no such comments to the film executives.

 Controversy around Dotcom's arrest and the protracted ongoing effort to extradite him, as well as charges of illegal spying, have dogged Key's government over the past two years.

 In the past month links between his government and right-wing bloggers have prompted separate accusations of dirty tricks against political opponents.

 But Key, largely unscathed in opinion polls, remains the favorite to gain a third consecutive term, although he is likely to need the support of minor parties to secure a majority. NZPOLL

 (Reporting by Gyles Beckford and Naomi Tajitsu; Editing by Clarence Fernandez) ||||| Like many nations around the world, New Zealand over the last year has engaged in a serious and intense debate about government surveillance. The nation’s prime minister, John Key of the National Party, has denied that New Zealand’s spy agency GCSB engages in mass surveillance, mostly as a means of convincing the country to enact a new law vesting the agency with greater powers. This week, as a national election approaches, Key repeated those denials in anticipation of a report in The Intercept today exposing the Key government’s actions in implementing a system to record citizens’ metadata.

 Let me be clear: any statement that mass surveillance is not performed in New Zealand, or that the internet communications are not comprehensively intercepted and monitored, or that this is not intentionally and actively abetted by the GCSB, is categorically false. If you live in New Zealand, you are being watched. At the NSA I routinely came across the communications of New Zealanders in my work with a mass surveillance tool we share with GCSB, called “XKEYSCORE.” It allows total, granular access to the database of communications collected in the course of mass surveillance. It is not limited to or even used largely for the purposes of cybersecurity, as has been claimed, but is instead used primarily for reading individuals’ private email, text messages, and internet traffic. I know this because it was my full-time job in Hawaii, where I worked every day in an NSA facility with a top secret clearance.

 The prime minister’s claim to the public, that “there is no and there never has been any mass surveillance” is false. The GCSB, whose operations he is responsible for, is directly involved in the untargeted, bulk interception and algorithmic analysis of private communications sent via internet, satellite, radio, and phone networks.

 If you have doubts, which would be quite reasonable, given what the last year showed us about the dangers of taking government officials at their word, I invite you to confirm this for yourself. Actual pictures and classified documentation of XKEYSCORE are available online now, and their authenticity is not contested by any government. Within them you’ll find that the XKEYSCORE system offers, but does not require for use, something called a “Five Eyes Defeat,” the Five Eyes being the U.S., U.K., Canada, Australia, and yes, New Zealand.

 This might seem like a small detail, but it’s very important. The Five Eyes Defeat is an optional filter, a single checkbox. It allows me, the analyst, to prevent search results from being returned on those countries from a particular search. Ask yourself: why do analysts have a checkbox on a top secret system that hides the results of mass surveillance in New Zealand if there is no mass surveillance in New Zealand?

 The answer, one that the government of New Zealand has not been honest about, is that despite claims to the contrary, mass surveillance is real and happening as we speak. The GCSB provides mass surveillance data into XKEYSCORE. They also provide access to the communications of millions of New Zealanders to the NSA at facilities such as the GCSB station at Waihopai, and the Prime Minister is personally aware of this fact. Importantly, they do not merely use XKEYSCORE, but also actively and directly develop mass surveillance algorithms for it. GCSB’s involvement with XKEYSCORE is not a theory, and it is not a future plan. The claim that it never went ahead, and that New Zealand merely “looked at” but never participated in the Five Eyes’ system of mass surveillance is false, and the GCSB’s past and continuing involvement with XKEYSCORE is irrefutable.

 But what does it mean?

 It means they have the ability see every website you visit, every text message you send, every call you make, every ticket you purchase, every donation you make, and every book you order online. From “I’m headed to church” to “I hate my boss” to “She’s in the hospital,” the GCSB is there. Your words are intercepted, stored, and analyzed by algorithms long before they’re ever read by your intended recipient.

 Faced with reasonable doubts, ask yourself just what it is that stands between these most deeply personal communications and the governments of not just in New Zealand, but also the U.S., Canada, the U.K., and Australia?

 The answer is that solitary checkbox, the Five Eyes Defeat. One checkbox is what separates our most sacred rights from the graveyard of lost liberty. When an officer of the government wants to know everything about everyone in their society, they don’t even have to make a technical change. They simply uncheck the box. The question before us is no longer “why was this done without the consent and debate of the people of this country,” but “what are we going to do about it?”

 This government may have total control over the checkbox today, but come Sept. 20, New Zealanders have a checkbox of their own. If you live in New Zealand, whatever party you choose to vote for, bear in mind the opportunity to send a message that this government won’t need to spy on us to hear: The liberties of free people cannot be changed behind closed doors. It’s time to stand up. It’s time to restore our democracies. It’s time to take back our rights. And it starts with you.

 National security has become the National Party’s security. What we’re seeing today is that in New Zealand, the balance between the public’s right to know and the propriety of a secret is determined by a single factor: the political advantage it offers to a specific party and or a specific politician. This misuse of New Zealand’s spying apparatus for the benefit of a single individual is a historic concern, because even if you believe today’s prime minister is beyond reproach, he will not remain in power forever. What happens tomorrow, when a different leader assumes the same power to conceal and reveal things from the citizenry based not on what is required by free societies, but rather on what needs to be said to keep them in power?

 Photo: David Rogers/Getty Images |||||
A summary of this is?

– Edward Snowden's latest revelations target New Zealand: The country's leaders repeatedly told the public that they weren't working on a domestic spying program, the whistleblower says, when in fact they were doing just that. "The Prime Minister’s claim to the public, that ‘there is no and there never has been any mass surveillance,' is false," Snowden writes in a piece for the Intercept. "If you live in New Zealand, you are being watched." He cites his NSA work, during which he "routinely came across the communications of New Zealanders." Snowden has revealed top secret documents that appear to point to an effort to intercept communications via an undersea cable that's responsible for most Internet traffic to and from New Zealand, Glenn Greenwald and Ryan Gallagher write at the Intercept. Ahead of the report, Prime Minister John Key acknowledged this weekend that a surveillance program had been planned, though he says he nixed it before it got under way, the Intercept adds. The country will hold an election Saturday, and Key holds that Megaupload founder Kim Dotcom, who paid for Greenwald's trip to the country, is trying to sway the election, Reuters reports. Dotcom, a New Zealand resident, is facing extradition.


BEIJING (AP) — China's currency fell further Wednesday following a surprise change in its exchange rate mechanism that rattled global markets and threatens to fan trade tensions with the United States and Europe.

 In this Tuesday, Aug. 11, 2015 photo, a bank clerk counts Chinese currency notes at a bank outlet in Huaibei in central China's Anhui province. China’s surprise move on Tuesday to devalue its currency... (Associated Press)

 In this Tuesday, Aug. 11, 2015 photo, a bank clerk counts Chinese currency notes as her colleague attends a customer at a bank outlet in Huaibei in central China's Anhui province. China’s surprise move... (Associated Press)

 The central bank said the yuan's 1.9 percent devaluation Tuesday against the U.S. dollar, which was its biggest one-day fall in a decade, was due to changes aimed at making the tightly controlled currency more market-oriented. That raised the prospect of still more declines, which would help struggling Chinese exporters at the expense of foreign competitors and might shore up flagging economic growth.

 On Wednesday, the yuan dropped another 1.6 percent. In theory, it could drop 2 percent every day given it can trade 2 percent around a rate that is set based on the previous day's closing value.

 Until now, China has set the yuan's value each day based on a basket of currencies that is believed to be dominated by the U.S. dollar. That meant the yuan rose as the dollar jumped over the past year, hurting its exporters and raising the threat of politically dangerous job losses. Exports in July plummeted by an unexpectedly steep 8.3 percent from a year earlier.

 The People's Bank of China promised Tuesday to keep the exchange rate "basically stable," but Wednesday's decline prompted suggestions the yuan is likely to fall further.

 The yuan is likely to see "continued strong influence" from the central bank, with Tuesday's change "probably marking the start of an engineered depreciation," said Mizuho Bank in a report.

 Many economists cautioned against seeing Beijing's move mainly as an effort to benefit its exporters. They note that China's currency, left to market forces alone, would have declined in value in recent months.

 The depreciation "will not change the gloomy picture of global demand," said Vincent Chan of Credit Suisse in a report. "The 2 percent devaluation cannot provide any meaningful help, but it caught the market by surprise."

 U.S. stocks tumbled Tuesday, with the Dow Jones industrial average closing down 212 points.

 China becomes the third major trader to take actions that lower the value of its currency. Initiatives by Japan and the European Union over the past two years depressed the yen and euro by a wider margin than this week's decline in the yuan.

 The yuan, also known as the renminbi, is allowed to fluctuate in a band 2 percent above or below a rate set by the People's Bank of China based on its currency basket.

 The bank said that starting Tuesday, the daily target will be based on the yuan's closing the previous day and information from traders about supply and demand for the currency.

 The change presented a dilemma for China's trading partners, who have called repeatedly for Beijing to let market forces set its exchange rate but don't want to see the yuan weaken.

 It sparked complaints in Washington, where members of Congress have long complained Beijing manipulates its currency to gain a trade advantage.

 "For years, China has rigged the rules and played games with its currency," said U.S. Sen. Chuck Schumer. "Rather than changing their ways, the Chinese government seems to be doubling down."

 The U.S. Treasury Department's response was more measured.

 "China has indicated that the changes announced today are another step in its move to a more market-determined exchange rate," a department statement said.

 The International Monetary Fund said the change "appears a welcome step" to give market forces a bigger role.

 "The exact impact will depend on how the new mechanism is implemented in practice," said an IMF statement. "We believe that China can, and should, aim to achieve an effectively floating exchange rate system within two to three years."

 The IMF said the latest change would have no effect on the decision about whether to add the yuan to the dollar, the euro, the yen and the British pound in the basket of currencies used to set the value of the Fund's in-house currency, called Special Drawing Rights. The IMF staff recommended last week that China wait until at least October 2016 to join. The Fund's board is due to consider that recommendation in October.

 China's economic growth has slowed to an annual rate of just 7 percent, which is healthy for most countries but far below the previous decade's double-digit pace.

 The Federal Reserve is expected to boost the short-term interest rate it controls later this year. A rate hike would likely raise the value of the dollar, which has already jumped about 14 percent in value in the past 12 months against a basket of foreign currencies.

 The rising dollar has hurt U.S. exporters by making their goods costlier abroad, and China's devaluation could further complicate the Fed's decision on when to raise rates. By making Chinese goods comparatively cheaper in the United States, a weaker yuan would push already-low U.S. inflation even lower.

 The Fed wants to be "reasonably confident" that inflation is returning to its 2 percent target before raising rates. Inflation has risen just 1.3 percent in the past 12 months.

 Michael Feroli, an economist at JPMorgan Chase, suggested the dollar's rise poses a concern for some Fed officials, known as doves, who have been reluctant to raise rates. Should the U.S. economy stumble in the coming weeks, "dollar strength would only further embolden the doves at the next meeting" in September, Feroli said.

 Still, Feroli said, "we think this a minor stumbling block for a September" rate increase.

 USB economist Tao Wang said Beijing would likely move cautiously, but investor expectations of further weakening "could quickly become entrenched" and cause the yuan to "depreciate quite quickly and significantly."

 She said that would represent a "sea change in China's exchange rate policy" but would help to support flagging economic growth.

 ___

 Rugaber contributed from Washington. AP Economics Writer Paul Wiseman in Washington and AP Writer Teresa Cerojano in Manila contributed to this report. ||||| SHANGHAI China's currency fell to a four-year low on Wednesday, slumping for a second day, after a central bank devaluation on Tuesday, and government sources believe the yuan may be allowed to slide even further to help the country's exporters.

 The yuan traded in China hit a low of 6.4510 per U.S. dollar, its lowest since August 2011, and the currency fared worse in international trade, touching 6.59 to the dollar.

 The currency has lost 3.5 percent against the U.S. dollar in China in the last two days, and around 4.8 percent in global markets after the People's Bank of China (PBOC), the central bank, changed the way it calculates the reference rate around which the yuan is allowed to trade in a two percentage point band.

 The PBOC said it would now calculate the daily yuan fix, by taking more notice of market forces, including the closing price in the previous day's trading session.

 The devaluation sparked fears of a global "currency war" and accusations that Beijing was unfairly supporting its exporters, but the central bank on Wednesday sought to reassure financial markets that it was not embarking on a steady depreciation.

 "Looking at the international and domestic economic situation, currently there is no basis for a sustained depreciation trend for the yuan," the People's Bank of China (PBOC) said.

 After the yuan slid further in early in Wednesday trade currency dealers said Chinese state-owned banks were seen selling dollars on behalf of the PBOC to restrain the yuan's fall, and the spot market rate recovered late in the day to close 6.3870, a rate which will influence Thursday's setting.

 "Apparently, the central bank does not want the yuan to run out of control," said a trader at a European bank in Shanghai.

 However, sources involved in the Chinese policy-making process said powerful voices within government were pushing for the yuan to go still lower, suggesting pressure for an overall devaluation of almost 10 percent.

 Tuesday's yuan devaluation followed a run of poor economic data and resulted in the biggest one-day fall since 1994, raising market suspicions that China was embarking on a longer-term depreciation of its exchange rate that would make Chinese exports cheaper.

 Data on Chinese factory activity growth and retail sales on Wednesday underlined sluggish growth in the world's second-largest economy, while fiscal expenditures jumped 24.1 percent in July, reflecting Beijing's efforts to stimulate economic activity.

 China's Ministry of Commerce acknowledged on Wednesday that the depreciation would have a stimulative effect on exports, as some Chinese steel producers have already cut export prices in response to the lower yuan.

 Economic growth in China has slowed markedly this year and will hit a 25-year low even if it meets its official 7.0 percent target. Some economists believe China's economy is already growing only half as fast as official data shows, or even less.

 Analysts at BMI Finance Ltd in Hong Kong downgraded their year-end forecasts for the currency to 6.83, down 10 percent from pre-devaluation levels.

 The currency's slide puts other Asian economies at a disadvantage also and resulted in Indonesia's rupiah and Malaysia's ringgit hitting 17-year lows on Wednesday. The Australian and New Zealand dollars also fell to six-year lows.

 Indonesia's central bank pinned the rupiah's fall directly on the yuan devaluation and said it would step into the foreign exchange and bond markets to curb volatility.

 STOCKS FALL AGAIN AFTER YUAN SLIDE

 Stocks on major world markets fell again on Wednesday in the wake of the yuan devaluation as exporters to China feared a loss of competitiveness.

 An MSCI index of stocks on major world markets lost about 0.5 percent. Companies with notable exposure to China, including German automaker BMW and U.S. luxury goods maker Coach, lost 3.7 percent and 4.4 percent respectively.

 Investors sought safety in top-rated government bonds, driving yields on German two-year bonds to a record low and pushing U.S. Treasury yields down, with some analysts saying a long-awaited Federal Reserve interest rate rise may now be delayed.

 Trading in money markets showed investors are reducing expectations for a Fed interest rate increase in September due to concerns about global disinflation pressures resulting from China's moves.

 "Volatility is picking up and it’s causing turmoil, it’s pushing bond yields lower and it’s casting more doubt on the Fed," said Axel Merk, president and chief investment officer of Palo Alto, California-based Merk Investments.

 PLAYING TO THE IMF?

 The International Monetary Fund said China's move to make the yuan more responsive to market forces appeared to be a welcome step and that Beijing should aim for an effectively floating exchange rate within two to three years.

 Beijing has been lobbying the IMF to include the yuan in its basket of reserve currencies known as Special Drawing Rights, which it uses to lend to sovereign borrowers, which would enable more international use of the yuan.

 "Greater exchange rate flexibility is important for China as it strives to give market forces a decisive role in the economy and is rapidly integrating into global financial markets," an IMF spokesperson said.

 William Dudley, head of the New York Federal Reserve, also said an adjustment to the yuan was probably appropriate if the Chinese economy was weaker than the authorities had expected.

 On a trade-weighted basis, China's yuan has been rising in recent years in part because of its peg to the U.S. dollar. The yuan has gained more than 14 percent over the last year when factoring in inflation, according to data from the Bank for International Settlements, making its exports less competitive.

 However, the devaluation was decried by U.S. lawmakers from both parties on Tuesday as a grab for an unfair export advantage and could set the stage for testy talks when Chinese President Xi Jinping visits Washington D.C. next month, given acrimony over issues ranging from cybersecurity to Beijing's territorial ambitions in the South China Sea.

 (This story has been refiled to correct paragraph one spelling of devaluation)

 (Additional reporting by Samuel Shen in SHANGHAI and Jason Subler in BEIJING; Writing by Will Waterman, Nigel Stephenson and David Gaffen; Editing by Mike Collett-White and Clive McKeef) ||||| Stocks, currencies and commodities fall sharply across region as investors fear a stalling China economy and possible currency war despite Beijing’s assurances

 China stunned the world’s financial markets on Wednesday by devaluing its currency for a second consecutive day, triggering fears its economy is in worse shape than investors believed.

 The move sent fresh shockwaves through global markets, pushing shares sharply lower and sending commodity prices further into reverse as traders feared the move could also ignite a currency war that would destabilise the world economy.

 There were widespread losses on stock exchanges in Asia, and in Europe markets suffered falls of about 1%, with the FTSE 100 in London tumbling almost 2% at one stage before settling at 6571, down 1.4%.

 The Chinese authorities have acted after a string of poor economic figures showed that previous efforts to boost exports and growth against the headwind of an overvalued currency had failed.

 A drop of 6.6% in car sales in July followed data at the weekend showing an 8% fall in exports and slowing business investment growth in the same month. A survey tracking China’s factory output for July also missed expectations, coming in at 6% year-on-year growth instead of the 6.6% expected.

 One financial analyst said the devaluation, which pushed the yuan to a four-year low, heralded a tidal wave of cheap goods from Asia as other south east Asian countries followed suit.

 Albert Edwards, analyst at Societe Generale, said the yuan had become overvalued against the dollar in recent years and was unsustainably high relative to other major currencies.

 The Chinese currency hit a four-year low on Wednesday after the People’s Bank of China set the yuan’s daily midpoint even weaker than in Tuesday’s devaluation.

 Market slide as China moves to weaken yuan again - live Read more

 Unlike the pound and other major currencies, the yuan’s value is determined each day by the People’s Bank based on movements the previous day. As part of the devaluation, the authorities said they would widen the criteria to include more market information, allowing the currency to rise or fall more rapidly than before.

 The central bank sought to reassure financial markets that it was not embarking on a steady depreciation.

 “Looking at the international and domestic economic situation, currently there is no basis for a sustained depreciation trend for the yuan,” it said.

 A spokesman said the downward movement of the currency was a result of a project to liberalise its management and not a deliberate attempt to drive down its value.

 But with the bank having said on Tuesday that that day’s action was a “one-off depreciation”, the rapid two-day drop in the value of the currency of about 4% dealt a blow to investors. They fear a prolonged currency war that could damage world trade should the US and Japan retaliate and drive down the value of the dollar and yen.

 Oil prices remained below $50 a barrel, down from more than $110 a barrel last summer when the slowdown in China first became apparent. The prices of key industrial and construction metals – nickel, copper and aluminium – hit six-year lows.

 Rajeev De Mello, head of Asian fixed income at Schroders in Singapore, said: “While it is too early to say whether this is the beginning of a sustained devaluation of the yuan, other central banks may be forced to follow suit and that may trigger a fresh round of currency weakening around the emerging world.”

 Chinese yuan: everything depends on what happens next Read more

 The two devaluations come after a run of poor economic data and have raised suspicions that China is embarking on a longer-term slide in the exchange rate.

 A cheaper yuan will help Chinese exports by making them less expensive on overseas markets.

 The first move on Tuesday was the biggest one-day fall in the yuan since a massive devaluation in 1994. On Wednesday the yuan fell to 6.43 against the dollar, its weakest point since August 2011. The currency fared worse in offshore trade, touching 6.57.

 Why has China devalued its currency now and what impact will it have? Read more

 The International Monetary Fund said China’s move to make the yuan more responsive to market forces appeared to be a welcome step and that Beijing should aim to achieve an effectively floating exchange rate within two to three years.

 Beijing has been lobbying the IMF to include the yuan in its basket of reserve currencies, known as Special Drawing Rights, which it uses to lend to sovereign borrowers. This would mark a major step in the international use of the Chinese currency.

 “Greater exchange rate flexibility is important for China as it strives to give market forces a decisive role in the economy and is rapidly integrating into global financial markets,” an IMF spokesperson said. ||||| Photo Advertisement Continue reading the main story

 HONG KONG — As President Xi Jinping of China prepares for a state visit to Washington next month to smooth over troubled relations, his government has just turned the spotlight back on a recurring issue: the value of his country’s currency.

 The currency, the renminbi, is part of the fabric of the global economy, providing a way for China to further its diplomatic and investment goals. The renminbi is also an important tool for the leadership’s domestic agenda, namely supporting its economy.

 China now faces the difficult dilemma of trying to balance its needs at home and abroad.

 When China abruptly devalued its currency nearly 2 percent on Tuesday morning, authorities said market forces would play a bigger role in determining the value of the renminbi. After the renminbi fell further during trading on Tuesday, the central bank set the currency another 1.6 percent lower on Wednesday morning.

 The United States and others have long called for Beijing to let the currency move more freely, rather than keeping it under such tight control. China’s restrictions on the renminbi have also been a concern of the International Monetary Fund, which is weighing whether to include the renminbi in an elite group of world currencies along with the dollar, the euro and the yen.

 But China has another, seemingly contradictory, motive. In devaluing its currency, China is giving priority to its domestic needs. As China’s economy slows, a weaker currency will help buoy the country’s exporters and create jobs at home.

 Surging blue-collar wages in China coupled with recent declines in the currencies of rival exporters like South Korea and Taiwan have made it harder for Chinese companies to compete in labor-intensive industries like garment manufacturing and shoe production. Chinese exports fell 8 percent last month compared with a year ago.

 “When the renminbi was appreciating, our customers, who are mainly from North America and Europe, had complained about our prices being too high,” said Anna Cho, sales manager of the Shanghai Kaiyuan Pump Industrial Company, a maker of water and sewage pumps. “They will be happy about this new development,” she said, referring to the currency devaluation.

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 The coming months will provide a test of whether the leadership is focused more on reforms or on the nation’s economy. While Beijing wants a weak currency, it does not want it to go too low.

 On Tuesday, traders bet heavily that the renminbi would continue to fall. If Beijing follows through on its pledge to let the market play a much bigger role, more declines will follow.

 “If they really do it, it may be going down and down and down,” said Diana Choyleva, the chief economist at Lombard Street Research, a consulting firm in London.

 Devaluing the renminbi weeks before President Xi’s visit to the United States also poses clear political challenges at a time when China is trying to smooth over trans-Pacific disputes.

 In recent weeks, China announced a halt to its controversial construction of artificial islands in the South China Sea. It has also had an uncommonly muted response to American accusations of digital espionage.

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 The devaluation risks inflaming a seemingly dormant political issue in the United States: whether China manipulates its currency to gain a trade advantage. Critics in Congress have long argued that the renminbi is undervalued and that this dynamic has prompted many companies to move production to China.

 “For years, China has rigged the rules and played games with its currency, leaving American workers out to dry. Rather than changing their ways, the Chinese government seems to be doubling down,” said Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York.

 Under President George W. Bush and now under President Obama, the Treasury has been cautious about publicly criticizing China on currency policy. Treasury officials have not wanted to incite Chinese defiance, and they have tended to respect China’s contention that its trade surpluses, though huge, have shrunk as a percentage of its growing economy.

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 “We will continue to monitor how these changes are implemented and continue to press China on the pace of its reforms, including additional measures to transition to a market-oriented exchange rate and its stated desire to move towards an economy that is more dependent on domestic demand, which is in China and America’s best interests,” a Treasury representative said in a statement on Tuesday. “Any reversal in reforms would be a troubling development.”

 China’s action could also factor into the Federal Reserve’s thinking.

 The Fed’s leaders have been talking for months about raising interest rates as a way to curb the considerable monetary stimulus they have delivered to the strengthening American economy. But a weakened renminbi — and the possibility that other countries may follow suit — could mean further weakening of American exports and slower economic growth.

 “It could lower the odds of a Fed rate hike in the near term,” said Thomas Lam, the chief economist for industrialized economies at RHB Securities Singapore, a unit of a Malaysian financial conglomerate, the RHB Group.

 The currency situation puts China in a tricky position.

 China has the means to stop any unwanted drop in currency. The country has $3.5 trillion in foreign exchange reserves, which it can use to buy back renminbi globally and push up the value.

 But the devaluation also comes at a time when China is pushing for broader acceptance of the renminbi, and the exercise of tight currency controls undermines that effort.

 The International Monetary Fund contended for years that the renminbi was undervalued, but it dropped that assertion in May. Still, the I.M.F. in a staff report last week suggested that China would need more time to finish preparations for including the renminbi as a global reserve currency.

 The I.M.F., in particular, wants to see more evidence that the renminbi is being used outside China, notably for central bank reserves or bonds. The appetite among overseas central banks and bond investors for renminbi-denominated assets has gradually increased.

 But part of the demand has been a speculative bet that the renminbi will continue to rise against the dollar. Even small, occasional hints in the last 18 months that the renminbi might weaken have tended to erode such players’ enthusiasm. So Tuesday’s devaluation could damage China’s bid to bolster international use of its currency.

 The I.M.F. on Tuesday said that China’s new plan for determining the value of the renminbi “appears a welcome step as it should allow market forces to have a greater role.” But “the exact impact will depend on how the new mechanism is implemented in practice.”

 Senator Schumer warned that the devaluation might lower the chances that the renminbi will be recognized by the I.M.F. as a leading currency, as part of the fund’s so-called special drawing rights.

 “Unless and until China stops artificially devaluing their currency,” he said, “the renminbi should be barred from consideration as a global reserve currency by the I.M.F.” |||||

Write a summary.

– In a move that some analysts fear could be the start of a "global currency war," China's yuan dropped again today, dragging other Asian currencies down with it. Today's drop against the dollar was the second biggest since 1994, exceeded only by yesterday's, and the rapid fall has led some to believe that the country is trying to boost exports and create jobs at the expense of rivals like South Korea, Reuters notes. It's not clear how long the drop will continue: China has described the devaluation as a "one-off," and the New York Times notes that with $3.5 trillion in foreign currency reserves, China certainly has the ability to prevent any unwanted falls in the yuan. A change in the tightly controlled exchange-rate mechanism means the yuan could continue to drop 2% a day, the AP reports. The IMF has welcomed the move as a way to give market forces more control of a currency that China wants to play a bigger role globally, but US lawmakers are skeptical. "For years, China has rigged the rules and played games with its currency," says Sen. Chuck Schumer, per the AP. "Rather than changing their ways, the Chinese government seems to be doubling down." Today's drop in the yuan led to sharp falls in world markets, which analysts believe were caused by fears that China's economy is in worse shape than previously thought, the Guardian reports.


News article:

Conservative legislators in Washington state have proposed a bill that would allow fans to bring guns into stadiums.

 The bill was proposed by Republican representatives Matt Shea, David Taylor and Bob McCaslin and would prevent stadium operators from stopping members of the public with licenses to carry concealed firearms from entering their venues with weapons. Stadiums affected would include the Seattle Mariners’ Safeco Field and CenturyLink Field, the home of the NFL’s Seattle Seahawks and MLS’s Seattle Sounders. The Sounders won their first MLS title on Saturday night with victory over Toronto FC.

 On Sunday, the NFL told the Washington Post it would oppose the bill. “We haven’t seen the proposed legislation but we have a policy forbidding carrying a weapon into NFL stadiums,” Brian McCarthy, the NFL’s vice president of communications, said in a statement.

 Seattle Sounders hold nerve in shootout to clinch first ever MLS Cup Read more

 Although US sports do not have the same reputation for violence as some of the more dangerous parts of European and South American soccer, there would be obvious concerns about allow firearms into venues with alcohol and where passions can ignite. The Seahawks have the lowest arrest rate in the NFL, with 0.8 arrests per game. The San Diego Chargers have the highest, with 24.6 arrests per game – although that figure is partly influenced by the team’s “zero-tolerance” policy.

 The bill is likely to face strong opposition in Washington, a state with a strong Democratic base. ||||| A new proposed amendment to the Revised Code of Washington would change laws currently prohibiting a private company, such at the Seattle Seahawks, from banning guns from stadiums on public land.

 It's not currently illegal to carry a firearm into a game under Washington law, but CenturyLink Field, as well as Safeco Field and any other stadium, are allowed to prohibit folks from bringing certain items, including firearms, into said stadiums.

 House Bill 1015, proposed by three Republican members of the state House of Representatives, would eliminate the stadiums' ability to "prohibit persons with a valid concealed pistol license from carrying a concealed pistol in any facility or on any grounds of a facility."

 CenturyLink, like Safeco, is located on public property. But it's run by a private enterprise, one that prohibits people from bringing in guns.

 The new law, first noticed by the Seattle Times, would change that. Here's the full text of the proposed law:

 NEW SECTION. Sec. 2.

 A new section is added to chapter 36.102 RCW to read as follows:

 (1) A public stadium authority may not prohibit persons with a valid concealed pistol license from carrying a concealed pistol in any facility or on any grounds of a facility that is owned, operated, managed, administered, controlled, or maintained by the public stadium authority, or leased or rented to a private or public entity by the public stadium authority.

 (2) A private entity that operates, manages, administers, controls, maintains, or leases or rents a facility from a public stadium authority may not prohibit persons with a valid concealed pistol license from carrying a concealed pistol in the facility or on the grounds of the facility.

 Additionally, the law seeks to prohibit "any local government" from stopping folks from carrying guns into stadiums or convention centers, etc.

 A local governmental entity may not, whether by law, ordinance, regulation, rule, policy, or contractual agreement, prohibit persons with a valid concealed pistol license from carrying a concealed pistol in any stadium, convention center, arena, or similar facility, or on the grounds of any such facility, that is owned, operated, managed, administered, controlled, or maintained by the local governmental entity, or leased or rented to a private or public entity by the local governmental entity.

 The logistics of bringing a pistol into a stadium legally would be tricky to say the least, particularly when you consider the current restrictions on items allowed into NFL games.

 The league doesn't allow most bags in games, requiring fans to utilize clear plastic bags to bring items into games. It would be a stunning turn if the league suddenly allowed people to bring firearms into the stadium.

 And there's the whole matter of fan safety, of course. We saw in Raiders-Chiefs that people aren't afraid to fight in the stands of a football game following a couple of beers and a heated rivalry in a frigid night football game. Fighting in these situations is far from uncommon -- adding bullets and guns to these situations literally has deadly potential.

 The NFL is hardly afraid to utilize its leverage in certain political situations, typically behind the scenes more than outright, and it would hardly be surprising to see the league cough loudly and inform local politicians that the passage of such a law would be greatly frowned upon. |||||
What is a shorter version of the above article?

– Lawmakers in Washington state are floating a controversial idea to let sports fans bring guns to the stadium. Under the proposed amendment to state code, private entities that operate stadiums would not be able to prevent people with licenses for concealed guns from entering while armed, reports CBS Sports. In this case, the law would cover CenturyLink Field, where the Seattle Seahawks play, and Safeco Field, where the Mariners play. Not on board with the idea? The NFL. “We haven’t seen the proposed legislation but we have a policy forbidding carrying a weapon into NFL stadiums,” the league's vice president of communications tells the Washington Post in an email. As the Guardian notes, "there would be obvious concerns about allow firearms into venues with alcohol and where passions can ignite."


Write a summary based on this article:

Published on Feb 17, 2015

 "While you were chairman of the Commerce Committee, that committee set a record for unauthorized appropriations."

 - Steve Carell

 Footage from Comedy Central's Indecision 2000 coverage by The Daily Show (with Jon Stewart) ||||| Jon Stewart (The Daily Show host, 1999-2015):

 My wildest dream for The Daily Show when I started was “This will be fun. Hopefully we’ll do it well.” Success for me would’ve been feeling like I figured it out. That I got to express the things I wanted to. It was never “I want this to be a cultural touchstone . . . but only for a very small portion of America.” And I was hoping to stay on TV longer than nine months this time.

 The Daily Show premiered on Comedy Central on July 22, 1996, at 11:30 P.M. The format loosely tracked that of a conventional newscast: five or so opening minutes called “Headlines,” read by former ESPN anchor Craig Kilborn, followed by “Other News,” then usually a pre-taped “field piece” with a correspondent, and finishing up with Kilborn interviewing an actor or a musician.

 Some segments played off the hard news of the day, like the presidential contest between Bob Dole and Bill Clinton. “There was more of a pop-culture-and-lifestyle component only because what we were satirizing—particularly local news—was doing a lot of that stuff,” co-creator Lizz Winstead says. “We would make fun of the conventions of news. Like when TV reporters talk, how do you create drama in a story that doesn’t exist?”

 The day-to-day creative process of the first few years of The Daily Show centered on Winstead, fellow co-creator Madeleine Smithberg, and the writing staff. “My first day on the job,” Winstead says, “I have to pull the writers into my office and say, ‘Guys, you can’t have your mushroom dealer come up to the office.’ ” Kilborn came up with the signature “Five Questions” conceit for guest interviews, but otherwise largely read from the script.

 In November 1996, Comedy Central’s executives moved The Daily Show to 11 P.M., to replace Bill Maher’s Politically Incorrect, which had jumped to ABC, but also to counter-program the late local news.

 Kilborn’s Daily Show would peak at a nightly average of 357,000, yet Kilborn’s audience was growing, and the show was generating critical buzz. Perhaps more important than the chatter was the fact that it was indeed reaching the younger male viewers Comedy Central president Doug Herzog had targeted in the first place. The combination caught the attention of CBS, and in 1998 it offered Kilborn the slot following Late Night with David Letterman, at 12:30 A.M.

 “He starts to get a little heat, we’re starting to get a little attention with The Daily Show,” Herzog says, “and then the next thing you know Kilborn goes and signs with CBS without even telling us.”

 Panic, followed by auditions: David Alan Grier, Michael McKean, Greg Proops, Bill Weir, and Mike Rowe came to the studio and sat in the host’s chair. Daily Show correspondents Beth Littleford and Stephen Colbert got tryouts, too. But Herzog and other Comedy Central executives wondered about a black-leather-jacket-wearing stand-up comic, a guy who had hosted a short-lived MTV talk show produced by Smithberg. He had lost out to Conan O’Brien as Letterman’s NBC replacement; he had written a book of satirical essays; he had played Eve Harrington to Garry Shandling’s Margo Channing on The Larry Sanders Show; and lately he’d had some supporting roles in Hollywood rom-coms. Herzog didn’t think the highly regarded, slightly adrift comedian would be interested in the job. But, hey, what did he have to lose in buying lunch for Jon Stewart?

 From The Neal Peters Collection.

 JAMES DIXON (manager for Jon Stewart, 1987-):

 After The Jon Stewart Show was canceled, he was . . . not burnt on being on TV, but he wanted to kind of wet his feet with film. We had this nice deal with Harvey Weinstein.

 JON STEWART: At the time, I was obviously making my mark in such films as Wishful Thinking and Dancing with Architecture, or Dancing About . . . Oh, no. They ended up calling it something else. Playing by Heart, I think it was.

 Getting fired from the talk show was the real turning point for me. Because I thought that, after appearing on Letterman, now I’m a made man. I thought losing The Jon Stewart Show meant I was an unmade man. I realized you still have to make your act better. The goal is to produce, the goal is to make things. So I spent some time writing and performing on The Larry Sanders Show, and I learned a lot from Garry Shandling.

 JUDD APATOW (stand-up comic, writer, director):

 Garry had the foresight to write about the talk-show wars and this very subtle aspect of it, which is you support a young comedian, and slowly the network likes him more than it likes you, and then that younger guy, in ways that he understands and might not understand, slowly pushes you out of your job. Similar to what really happened with Leno and Conan and Fallon. So there was a moment when Garry was considering continuing The Larry Sanders Show and changing the name of it to The John Stewart Show, with an h so it wouldn’t really be Jon. Everyone was excited about it for a while, but it went away.

 JON STEWART: The Daily Show wasn’t necessarily on the radar. I think they called and said, “Hey, man, would you be interested in talking about this?”—something along those lines, something as romantic as that.

 JAMES DIXON: I definitely advocated for him to do it. I just said to him, “You can put this through your prism. You can make it smarter and different than what it’s been.” Now, I definitely didn’t see the show becoming the political lightning rod that it evolved into.

 DOUG HERZOG (executive, MTV, 1984-95; president, Comedy Central, 1995-98; executive, Viacom, 2004-):

 In the summer of ‘98, when we announced that Jon was going to take over The Daily Show, we had a little press conference in the lobby of the old Comedy Central offices. And Stephen Colbert showed up, as a member of the press representing The Daily Show, wanting to know why he didn’t get the job.

 STEPHEN COLBERT (correspondent, 1997-2005):

 “You told me he wasn’t funny.” That’s what Jon said to Doug Herzog.

 MATT LABOV (publicist for Jon Stewart, 1994-2008):

 The stakes for Jon were fairly high at that point, because he’s not a super-young guy anymore, and he’s had shots, and people easily disappear and go into the woodwork. He didn’t get the Conan job on NBC; he didn’t get the 12:30 job after Letterman. If this doesn’t work on fucking cable, then where would Jon have ended up?

 JON STEWART: A couple of months before I officially started as host there was a meeting with the writers and producers. Let’s call that “Jonny’s surprise party.” I knew that the people working on the Kilborn show were rightfully proud of it. It had done well. It was not the sensibility that I thought was right for me, and so when they approached me for the show, I was pretty clear about the direction I thought I wanted to take it. Seemed like everybody was on board with that, and so this was my first chance to meet with all the people who, I had been told, were so excited about that. So excited. They’re so happy you’re here.

 And I walked in, and it was a room full of people who, as it turned out, were annoyed that I had an idea about where I wanted to go, who thought that I was going to MTV it up. I was told, “This isn’t about bands. We do a real show here.” I just sat there like “Oh, fuck.” It felt a little bit like “Wow, none of this was in the brochure. The brochure said that this was oceanfront property.”

 JAMES DIXON: I had to talk Jon down. Not from a tree—from a skyscraper. Because they basically said to him, “Welcome aboard. This is how we do shit here. Grab a chair.” It was bullshit.

 PAUL RUDD (actor):

 Technically I was Jon’s first Daily Show guest interview. I went to the University of Kansas, and my roommate, Stewart Bailey, became a segment producer who was with the show from the very beginning. I’d been on Kilborn’s Daily Show. When Jon replaced Craig, they wanted to do a test show so Jon could get used to the format.

 Stewart made his debut on Monday, January 11, 1999. His first joke was that Kilborn was “on assignment in Kuala Lumpur.” His first headline, “The Final Blow,” was about the Senate impeachment trial of President Bill Clinton. His first guest was Michael J. Fox, then starring on ABC’s Spin City. But Stewart looked, for the first months, very much the guest himself. Other than a new couch and desktop—and blue script pages for Stewart to scribble on portentously, replacing Kilborn’s white paper—the set design was largely unchanged. The theme song, Bob Mould’s “Dog on Fire,” was the same. And Stewart’s suits were so ill-fitting that they looked like they were inherited from his much taller predecessor.

 By Mike Blake/Reuters.

 JUSTIN MELKMANN (post-production supervisor; segment producer; later supervising producer, video department; 1997-):

 During the Kilborn era, it was about “How can we seem like we’ve gone too far?” With Jon, we went from creating the news—creating funny spoof headlines—to making fun of the news. That was a big change.

 MO ROCCA (correspondent, 1998-2003):

 Shortly after Jon arrived, we had done a bit about Dana Plato dying, and Jon felt bad about delivering a joke when the end of her life had been so pathetic. We had a meeting where he said he had resolved that the show needed to have a point of view and couldn’t just be the kid at the back of the classroom throwing spitballs in all directions. I remember people trading the kind of glances that said, “Oh shit, this is going to be a disaster.”

 JON STEWART: To be fair to the writers who stayed from Kilborn’s show, they had a successful thing going. They thought of it as a continuation of their show. I thought it was a new show. To me it wasn’t edgy or provocative to just take napalm to a bush for no reason. You wanted it to be pointed, purposeful, intentional, surgical.

 I felt like I walked in there with a very open “O.K., so this will be great,” and it was “Hey, motherfucker, you came here to kill a baby.”

 KENT JONES (writer, 1996-2001):

 Well, I would not agree with that. I don’t remember any of this being as hostile as it has been portrayed. I just don’t.

 MADELEINE SMITHBERG (co-creator; executive producer, 1996-2002):

 Because of the point of view that had been created by Craig Kilborn sitting in the chair, the writers’ role had inflated. Yeah, they were spoiled rotten, because almost every show in late night is talent driven. They got too big for their britches.

 JON STEWART: Six or eight weeks in, the writers called me into their office. They’re like, “You can’t change our jokes anymore.” I didn’t know what to say.

 So after a weekend of pacing and smoking and having tremendous Lincoln-Douglas debates on the couch by myself, I went back in, and it was horrible. I basically told them all to fuck off. “You work for me. And if you don’t like the direction, O.K. I get that. Don’t work here.”

 “THERE WERE POINTS WHERE I THOUGHT . . . I’VE GOT TO LEAVE,” SAYS STEWART OF THE EARLY TURMOIL.

 There were points where I thought, I made the wrong decision. I’ve got to leave. But I don’t give up very easily. It was open hostility, which is so enjoyable. It became that sense of “O.K., let’s arm-wrestle.” This will give you a hint of my personality of grudges.

 I didn’t really have a game plan. I knew what I didn’t want. But then turning it into what you did want was the next scenario, and that was going to take time, and effort, and accomplices. What I needed most were accomplices.

 BEN KARLIN (head writer, later executive producer, 1999-2006):

 I was living in Los Angeles, working with a bunch of guys from The Onion, selling pilots and doing punch-up on movies. We did a pilot for Fox called Deadline Now, at about the same time The Daily Show was launching. We kind of did the exact opposite. We didn’t want to be winking at the audience. We wanted to play it straight and not really acknowledge we were a comedy show. We hired actors and went about trying to produce a news show that was very much in the spirit of the Onion newspaper. And, frankly, we were quite scornful of the Kilborn Daily Show.

 Our template host, when we’d come up with show ideas, was always Jon Stewart. We loved Jon Stewart. So when it was announced that Jon was taking over The Daily Show, our little comedy-snob nerd group thought it was a bad move. For him. Comedy Central was still pretty second-tier, and that might even be nice. And Jon was the Letterman heir apparent.

 I got a call from my agent saying, “Listen, Jon is looking for a new head writer, loves The Onion, has heard that you’re kind of the de facto leader of the Onion guys’ group out in L.A. Would you be willing to come out to New York and meet with them?”

 JON STEWART: I really liked his sensibility. Ben seemed to be concerned with hypocrisy and the silly façades of politics. He seemed to know where the absurdity was, and that was an important change in focus for what we wanted to do. There’s also a certain steeped-in-neurosis bathos that probably was a rhythm that we both clicked on. That similar Jewie Jewerman from Jewville.

 The big thing was to find somebody who had thoughts, who cared, who had an opinion. Part of what The Onion is, and part of what Ben was steeped in, was the idea of deconstruction as your first step of re-creation. So Ben was a natural fit, although he had not had the TV experience.

 From Comedy Central.

 BEN KARLIN: I was friendly with Bob Odenkirk and David Cross. They were kind of like the grand Pooh-Bahs of the alternative-comedy scene in L.A.—Sarah Silverman, Janeane Garofalo, Patton Oswalt. It was that whole wave of comics. Bob and David said The Daily Show sounded like a great opportunity. So I sublet my apartment, sold my Harley, found someone to take my dog for a while, and came to New York with three duffel bags.

 JON STEWART: Ben walked into a buzz saw.

 BEN KARLIN: I’m not going to talk shit about anybody. But the staff had its allegiances, and the things that they liked to do, and the way they liked to do it. Now you’ve got this guy, Jon, who is a writer, who has a strong point of view.

 LIZZ WINSTEAD (co-creator; head writer, correspondent, 1996-1998):

 As much as I loved the original writers, I created some little monsters. Once Jon realized he needed to take charge, you can’t afford to have people who are not in the Jon Stewart business. And so there’s a bit of Kool-Aid drinking that has to take place.

 Karlin arrived as head writer in April 1999 and quickly formed a complementary duo with Stewart. Karlin pushed for a higher quotient of righteous anger in The Daily Show’s jokes; Stewart had an innate sense of what would get big laughs.

 BEN KARLIN: We were very kindred spirits, with very similar points of view, and my critique of the show was very much in line with his problems with the show: Why are we going after these helpless targets? Maybe we should focus the power of this kind of big news show on things that are actually newsworthy, rather than just look through the paper for what seems funny.

 Clashes, pitting Stewart and Karlin against some of the holdover Kilborn writers, would flare for the next year, with one confrontation—which became known inside the show as “the fuck-you meeting”—being leaked to the New York Post’s “Page Six.”

 JON STEWART: I think that was the meeting where I said, “You’re not a group. You’re not a unit. You’re not ‘the writers.’ You’re individual writers that have been hired, and you will be judged within that.” It was just an attempt to reclaim some semblance of order. It was an absolute flat-out power struggle, but one that I felt blindsided by.

 BEN KARLIN: At one point during the battle for the heart and soul of the show, one of the writers snuck into Madeleine’s office and replaced some of the items on the board that tracks the stories we’re doing with personal insults. Some of them were about me; some were about other people. It was the most juvenile thing in the world. Jon and I used to have this thing: crazy out, sane in. We wanted to try to build a show of smart, funny, reasonable people with a similar vision who were hard workers.

 An enormous step in that direction was Karlin’s first addition to the writing staff: a dizzyingly fast-thinking, cheerfully caustic 27-year-old who would become a major figure in the creative life of The Daily Show.

 DAVID JAVERBAUM (writer, later executive producer, 1999-2010):

 I’d gone to Harvard and written for the Lampoon and Hasty Pudding, then I went to graduate school for musical-theater composition, at N.Y.U. It’s arguably the most useless master’s degree even by master’s-degree standards. I had a lot of creative things I was interested in, but I had no idea what I wanted to do. I was temping for three years at law firms and Merrill Lynch.

 I knew Ben Karlin from a teen tour that we were on together, the thing where Jewish middle-class kids go around the country and pretend to rough it for six weeks. Ben, after college at Wisconsin, wound up working at The Onion, and he said, “Do you want to contribute?” So I began writing a lot of Onion headlines and some articles, and I had the idea for the book Our Dumb Century.

 Then I spent a year at Letterman as a writer, and I hated that. Not the people, per se, but it all comes from the top down, and Letterman, even at that point, which was ‘98 to ‘99, was just a detached, aloof figure who would stay there for, like, 13 hours a day for no reason. And I quit. I was making six figures. I’d never made the upper half of five before, but it just was not worth it. It was crushing my soul.

 Ben was hired as the head writer for The Daily Show, and once again he called me and said, “Are you interested in writing?” So I owe Ben for both of those opportunities. I think I was Ben’s first writing hire, in July 1999.

 BEN KARLIN: D.J. has genius-like qualities, almost to the point where—it’s not Asperger-y, because he’s a funny, normal guy. But the way he can hold information, the speed with which his mind works, it’s almost like he’s got a broken brain that works really well in this way. I’ve known him since he was 16 years old. He always was like this.

 Usually in a writers’ room you know that this guy is my joke guy, that one is my story guy, that’s my structure person. And D.J. has the ability to pitch individual jokes that are funny; he can come up with overarching structures that are funny; he can take over someone’s script and make it better.

 In Karlin, and now Javerbaum, Stewart had hired invaluable off-camera allies. But he quickly recognized that he had inherited an indispensable on-camera co-conspirator. Stephen Colbert had a subversive streak that was greatly abetted by the fact that he looked like a trustworthy middle-American insurance salesman.

 By Al Levine/Comedy Central.

 STEPHEN COLBERT: It was a complete happy accident that I ended up at The Daily Show. I had been working for ABC at The Dana Carvey Show in 1996. That show got canceled, my wife wasn’t working, and we had a baby. I desperately needed a job. Someone from the entertainment division recommended to the news division that if they were looking for somebody who was funny but looked really straight, for a correspondent for Good Morning America, that they should consider me. They hired me. I did exactly two reports. Only one of which ever made it to air.

 After those two reports, I pitched 20 stories in a row that got shot down. At the same time, my agent, James Dixon, who also represented Madeleine Smithberg, said, “You should meet with Madeleine. She’s doing this other show, and I bet that they would do those stories.” They had me on for a trial basis, and for the next nine months I worked at The Daily Show occasionally, during Craig Kilborn’s second year. But it was totally a day job. I never expected to stay, because I did sketch comedy and I wrote, and I really didn’t think that The Daily Show was going to go anyplace.

 JON STEWART: The first bit Stephen did on the show after I arrived, I think it was something about baby-back ribs. You could just feel: “This guy knows how to perform in a scene, is present, has an ease with language.” The key then was “What do we do with that?”

 STEPHEN COLBERT: I don’t really know why Jon and I worked together so well. It’s hard to quantify, but it happened very early. When Jon first got there, he had a rough ride with some of the people who had worked with Craig. But I immediately knew he was a guy I should listen to. I saw how thoughtful he wanted to be about political comedy and how he invited us to have our own thoughts, invest the jokes with our own beliefs. And maybe he thought he could trust me.

 Changing the lineup of correspondents and contributors, the on-air faces of the show, was crucial, if less contentious. A. Whitney Brown and Brian Unger left when Kilborn did; Colbert, Rocca, Beth Littleford, Frank DeCaro, and Stacey Grenrock Woods stayed on. Stewart’s first correspondent addition was Vance DeGeneres. Then Colbert helped recruit another major talent.

 STEVE CARELL (correspondent, 1999-2003):

 I got a call from Stephen Colbert. He and I were on The Dana Carvey Show together in the spring of 1996, and one of the sketches that we did was called “Waiters Who Are Nauseated by Food.” And Madeleine Smithberg, who had hired Stephen onto The Daily Show, saw that and asked who I was—asked Stephen—and then Stephen called me and said, “Would you be interested maybe in doing a field piece?” And then Madeleine called and followed up and asked if I’d do a field piece out here in Los Angeles. Nancy [Walls Carell] and I were living out here at the time, and I had a holding deal with ABC. So we were just watching a lot of the Game Show Network.

 “I REALLY DIDN’T THINK The Daily Show WAS GOING TO GO ANYPLACE,” SAYS COLBERT.

 We decided to stage the field piece right underneath the HOLLYWOOD sign, up in the Hills, and that I was going to do the walk-and-talk as I was essentially walking up the side of a mountain, and obviously play up the fact that I was really out of shape, that it was a very bad correspondent to have chosen for a walk-and-talk.

 Apparently Madeleine really liked that moment within the piece and thought that that was a good choice. They asked if I’d move out to New York and be a regular on The Daily Show.

 No one was really familiar with this show. My agent didn’t see it as a positive step in my career. Let’s put it that way. They just saw it as a little nothing cable show. A job, but nothing that was going to amount to much. Jon had just become the host about six months before.

 JON STEWART: Carell, I knew very little about him. These guys didn’t come from stand-up. I knew stand-ups. I knew Dave Attell, I knew Lewis Black. I did not know Vance, Mo, Steve, Stephen.

 BEN KARLIN: So much of the writing of The Daily Show actually comes down to brainstorming and coming up with the big-picture ideas. Once we started realizing what an incredible tool Carell and Colbert were, we said we’ve got to bring more of that into the studio. Let’s not just see them once a week or once every two weeks in a field piece. Let’s get both those guys on the show several times a week in one form or another. They’re too talented.

 What Stewart and his colleagues could not have known was that they had arrived at the perfect moment, with the media and political worlds on the cusp of upheaval. When Stewart first sat behind the fake anchor desk, the anchors of the real news were still a trio of white male eminences: Tom Brokaw at NBC, Peter Jennings at ABC, and Dan Rather at CBS. But the network news hegemony had been rattled by the arrival of CNN, and especially by its coverage of the 1990 Gulf War. Now Fox News and MSNBC—both launched, coincidentally, within months of The Daily Show’s 1996 debut—were rapidly expanding their footprints on cable systems. Soon the Internet would flatten the traditional TV news industry. And a wised-up, postmodern generation of viewers was hungry for what The Daily Show would soon deliver.

 The turn of the century was also a boom time for network newsmagazines. NBC was airing Dateline five nights a week. ABC had 20/20 and Primetime; CBS had 48 Hours. Syndicated shows including Inside Edition added an even cheesier, tabloid flair to the genre. The TV-newsmagazine formula—leaning heavily on sensationalized crime stories, breathless celebrity profiles, and consumer-product scares—was ripe for parody. As were the self-serious anchor-reporter stars of TV newsmagazines: the style of The Daily Show’s correspondents drew special inspiration from the overinflated gravitas of Dateline’s Stone Phillips.

 MADELEINE SMITHBERG: I always say that Stone Phillips deserves a “created by” credit for The Daily Show, because I was obsessed with the guy, and we studied him.

 RORY ALBANESE (production assistant, later executive producer, 1999-2013):

 Colbert will tell you his character for years was just Stone Phillips.

 In the Kilborn era, field-department pieces frequently featured obscure eccentrics—say, a man who pulled his own teeth and replaced them with driveway gravel. Those kinds of bits didn’t go away immediately under Stewart.

 KAHANE CORN COOPERMAN (field producer, later co-executive producer, 1996-2015):

 I produced a field piece, with Stacey Grenrock Woods as the correspondent, about a guy, Alexander P., who had been a rock star in Ukraine and came here and was now a waiter in a hotel restaurant in Grand Rapids, Michigan. This piece may well have been in the works before Jon arrived. But it airs, and after the show you have a postmortem. And Jon was not happy. He said, “Your targets are just wrong. They shouldn’t be people on the fringe. Our targets need to be the people who have a voice, and that’s politicians, and that’s the media.”

 STACEY GRENROCK WOODS (correspondent, 1998-2003):

 I heard Jon was very unhappy with that piece, and I don’t blame him at all. I didn’t like it, either, but it was given to me. I think it ended up being a policy-changing piece.

 STEVE CARELL: The correspondents had their own little thing going on with the field pieces. Jon left it up to us in terms of what sort of characters we were developing.

 I saw my character as a former local-news anchor who had been demoted to reporting on a nondescript cable news show and was a little bitter about it. Everyone to a certain degree had different variations on blowhard or idiot reporter. But I mean, let’s face it—we didn’t know what we were doing.

 NANCY WALLS CARELL (correspondent, 1999-2002):

 No.

 STEVE CARELL: None of us are correspondents. None of us have backgrounds in journalism.

 NANCY WALLS CARELL: Mo was pretty knowledgeable, actually.

 STEPHEN COLBERT: There was a very specific way we were supposed to present ourselves when we set up field pieces: “I’m from The Daily Show.” “What’s The Daily Show?” “Well, it’s an alternative news-and-entertainment program.” “What channel is it on?” “Well, I don’t know what channel it is where you live. Where we live it’s Channel 29.” Anything other than saying the words “Comedy Central.” We were never allowed to lie, but let’s not advertise we were on Comedy Central, because not being a famous show was really useful to us in the early days.

 I was the first correspondent to be sued. After a piece ran, a guy claimed I claimed I was from CNN. I never said that. But if you make a man comedically look like Hitler and it turns out that he is a retired lawyer with a lot of time on his hands, you’re going to get sued. That’s the lesson for today, children.

 STEVE CARELL: The field pieces with eccentrics and oddballs, those were uncomfortable. For all of us. I almost didn’t . . . I won’t say I almost didn’t do the show, but I had some major reservations about doing it for exactly that reason, because I didn’t like the idea of making fun of people only because they were eccentric or different, and . . .

 NANCY WALLS CARELL: Duping them.

 STEVE CARELL: Yeah. Shooting fish in a barrel is easy. When you go after someone who is intolerant or racist or has any sort of hateful nature, that’s a different story. I think that’s fair game. So part of what I tried to do with my character is put the impetus on myself, the comedic impetus, that I was the bigger idiot.

 During his first year as host Stewart devoted far more energy to retooling the staff and the process inside the building. But it was the field department, in a series of excursions to New Hampshire to “cover” the presidential primaries, that really began pointing The Daily Show’s tone and point of view in a new direction. Initially intimidated by the straight political media pack, correspondents Rocca, Walls Carell, DeGeneres, and Carell played jester.

 Photograph by Annie Leibovitz.

 STEVE CARELL: When we went up to the first Republican debate we had our jackets with “The Daily Show” embroidered on them, and we’re walking around with microphones. It was terrifying because people didn’t know that we were fake. So we could get away with a lot of stuff. Bush looked at us like we were insane.

 CINDY McCAIN (wife of Senator John McCain):

 All of a sudden there were these guys in these crazy jackets, popping up at campaign events, and nobody knew who they were. But they were funny.

 STEW BAILEY (field producer, later co-executive producer, 1996-2005):

 There was a Republican debate in New Hampshire, so we were going to do a piece from the spin room. And the spin room even then was acknowledged as the least newsworthy event of all time. Our premise was that it’s essentially a parlor game, and if that’s the case, let’s really turn it into a parlor game. I had each of the correspondents asking questions from Trivial Pursuit to the candidates.

 MO ROCCA: All of us were nervous as hell, and so I just went for it: “Senator McCain, who became the hottest pop star to come out of Iceland in the mid-1990s?”

 STEW BAILEY: Immediately our other correspondents start yelling, “Don’t skirt the question, Senator! You have to answer!”

 MO ROCCA: And McCain showed why he almost upended George W. Bush in that race, because he played along, making this silly face. I remember the CNN people looking at us like, “O.K., that was funny. But who are you guys?”

 JON STEWART: When we went up to New Hampshire we were under the mistaken assumption that we had to integrate ourselves with the political media’s process and become them to parody them. Turns out we didn’t have to do that. We had thought, Oh, you’re a political reporter on television, which must mean something. Turns out it doesn’t mean anything. All it means is that somebody pointed a camera at you and lit it. So that was a revelation, and not a positive one.

 Then, in December 1999, came a breakthrough—a five-minute segment that pushed past the silly and into the satirical. Carell climbed onto McCain’s bus and changed the entire trajectory of The Daily Show.

 STEW BAILEY: Remember, McCain that year was a huge deal. He won the New Hampshire primary. That was really his moment. And his big gimmick was his bus, the Straight Talk Express.

 I was supervising in the field department. Our idea was that we were trying to get on the Straight Talk Express, but we couldn’t. There was a secondary press bus. If you’re in the rollover bus you just don’t feel like you matter. So the premise was going to be: if Steve Carell finally does get on the Straight Talk Express, that means we were at the table with all the big important players. To get on McCain’s bus was a coup for us; it meant that somebody was going to allow us to bring our reindeer games into a legitimate political moment.

 CINDY McCAIN: The actual press bus, which was completely different from ours, was really awful, in fact. Steve Carell was talking about, did we feed the press, or did we just lock them in the bus? They were pleading with me—is there any way I can get them on the main bus? They were a hoot to be around, so John invited them on the Straight Talk Express.

 STEW BAILEY: We needed to then have Carell basically ask one question that is going to get us kicked off. The idea was going to be we had a brief moment of glory, we asked a question, and then we lost our privileges.

 STEVE CARELL:) [On board the Straight Talk Express, reading from a legal pad as McCain grins.] Let’s do a lightning round: your favorite book?

 SENATOR JOHN McCAIN: For Whom the Bell Tolls.

 STEVE CARELL: Favorite movie?

 McCAIN: Viva Zapata!

 CARELL: Charlton Heston?

 McCAIN: Marlon Brando.

 CARELL: Close enough. If I were a tree, I would be a . . .

 McCAIN: If I were a tree, I would be a root. [Pause.] What does that mean?

 CARELL: Senator, how do you reconcile the fact that you were one of the most vocal critics of pork-barrel politics and yet while you were chairman of the Commerce Committee that committee set a record for unauthorized appropriations? [Four seconds of silence that feel like four hours.] I was just kidding! I don’t even know what that means! [McCain looks at ceiling, shrugs in relief, awkwardly slaps hand to his own face. Carell shuffles sheepishly down the bus stairs and out the door, then stands on a highway median.] Oh, they all laughed at my little question. But two things were abundantly clear. It was the wrong question to ask, and I was going to be walking.

 STEW BAILEY: Carell and Nick McKinney, the producer, had pulled the question out of Time on the way there, driving to the shoot. Just the fact that Steve Carell can get those words out of his mouth and that it sounded like something a smart person would say really threw McCain off. There was such a delay.

 STEVE CARELL: It was really funny because all of McCain’s handlers . . . you could feel the whole bus tense up. I thought McCain might just laugh it off, or probably give me some sort of joke response.

 BEN KARLIN: I remember seeing it in the editing room. I remember Jon called me down, and seeing it and thinking, Yeah, this is what we should be doing. This is the goal. It was one of Carell’s most incredible moments. He asks McCain a question in a way that no journalists were talking to the candidates. And it was like, Oh shit, we are able, in this weird, unintentional way, to add a level of insight to the process that doesn’t exist. That was really, really exciting. It meets the standard of being funny; it meets the standard of being relevant.

 JOHN McCAIN (U.S. senator, Arizona, 1987-; Republican presidential nominee, 2008):

 That was great. I still remember Steve Carell on the bus. I was certainly aware of Jon and the show early on, and knew they would try to have some fun with us. I wanted to be funny. I wanted these young people to know that I’m a guy with a sense of humor. I’m not some dull, dry, old senator.

 BEN KARLIN: That moment, it was the beauty and the weakness of The Daily Show. You had this incredibly pregnant moment where you forced a politician to go off-book, and it was uncomfortable, and it was honest. Then, because of our role as a comedy show, you have to take the air out of it, and it let McCain off the hook.

 STEVE CARELL: Yeah, to press it—we really hadn’t set ourselves up in that context to start going after him. It was making fun of a gotcha moment. And I think that a lot of what we do on The Daily Show is making fun of journalistic tropes, and I think that was one of them.

 MO ROCCA: That was the first time we were in The New York Times—in a news-analysis piece, not the TV column.

 JON STEWART: The real revelation for the show, covering the 2000 campaign, was that before everything that happens publicly in politics there’s a meeting—so what’s that meeting? That’s what’s interesting. It always struck me as “We’re always covering the wrong thing. We’re always covering the appearance, but we’re never covering that meeting.” When you watch that pack of cameras follow a presidential candidate, you go, “That’s not interesting. What’s interesting is to stand behind them and watch that,” because then you learn a little bit about the process.

 That’s when the idea of deconstructing the process came to the fore of how we were going to make the show. Before, it was just . . . we were making jokes. Some of them were insightful; some of them were not. The show came to exist in the space between what they’re telling you in public and the meeting that they had where they decided to do it that way. Seeing that was the aha of “That’s the show.”

 CINDY McCAIN: I still have those jackets, by the way. I talked them out of their big New Hampshire jackets. They were around John so much, and I finally said, “Look, these jackets are too good. I’ve got to get one from you, please.” They gave them to me. It’s a great souvenir.

 Adapted from The Daily Show (The Book): An Oral History as Told by Jon Stewart, the Correspondents, Staff and Guests, by Chris Smith, with a foreword by Jon Stewart, to be published this month by Grand Central Publishing; © 2016 by Busboy Productions. |||||

– Jon Stewart took over as host of the Daily Show in January 1999, but when did the program truly start becoming the Daily Show that legions of fans would come to love? Try December of that year, when Steve Carell boarded John McCain's campaign bus "and changed the entire trajectory" of the show, writes Chris Smith at Vanity Fair. The article is a fascinating oral history of the show's beginning that includes interviews with Stewart, Carell, Stephen Colbert, and pretty much everyone involved. The first year was rough for Stewart as he fought with the holdover writing staff from previous host Craig Kilborn and sought to put his stamp on the show. Things came together in that Carell interview, in which he peppers McCain with softball questions, then springs a policy zinger. After a few seconds of awkward silence, Carell says, "I was just kidding! I don’t even know what that means!" And the tense moment subsides. (See the clip.) Carell: "It was making fun of a gotcha moment. And I think that a lot of what we do on The Daily Show is making fun of journalistic tropes, and I think that was one of them." Head writer Ben Karlin: "I remember seeing it in the editing room. I remember Jon called me down, and seeing it and thinking, Yeah, this is what we should be doing. This is the goal. It was one of Carell’s most incredible moments. He asks McCain a question in a way that no journalists were talking to the candidates. And it was like, Oh s---, we are able, in this weird, unintentional way, to add a level of insight to the process that doesn’t exist. That was really, really exciting." Click for the full piece, in which Stewart talks about how that 2000 campaign provided his "aha moment" of how to present the show—by "deconstructing the process."