Part of Alex Christy’s comedy-cop routine at the Media Research Center is to complain that late-night TV shows have too many liberals on (though he has never complained that Greg Gutfeld’s show on Fox News has too many-right-wingers). He also gets a little upset when his obvious bias is called out. Thus, he complained in a July 31 post:
As Jon Stewart concluded Comedy Central’s The Weekly Show podcast on Thursday, he attacked Fox News for citing my late night guest studies.
Against the backdrop of FCC Chairman Brendan Carr claiming cancelled CBS host Stephen Colbert was too far left, producer Brittany Mehmedovic observed, “I also noticed like Fox News is getting in on the party now by counting how many conservative guests are on shows versus how many liberal guests are on shows.”
Stewart didn’t see what the big deal was, “The entire bullshit of the—again, this is them trying to police and create rules that they would never follow. The idea that by having what may be a more left-leaning or progressive bent or just bringing in. That’s how Fox is popular. That’s how any of these people, you know, they all talk about ‘Gutfeld’s the most popular,’ yet he’s not popular because he’s a both sides guy. He’s not, you know, a fair use, like, you know, the Fairness Doctrine says, like, he’s relentless.”
I think more conservative guests on these shows would make better television and lead to a more well-informed audience, but the last thing I would advocate for is government-run comedy shows. I believe the First Amendment applies to everyone, including liberal comedians. The point of the studies is simply to show how these shows, which many consider to be non-partisan, unifying cultural institutions in a way that Fox News isn’t or more trustworthy than traditional news sources, are just MSNBC with jokes and more F-bombs.
But Christy has been completely silent on Gutfeld’s guest list, either to praise or criticize it, and he didn’t explain why Gutfeld gets off a pass from him despite that rampant bias.
The next day, Christy served up a more petty response:
We here at the Media Research Center have been counting the guests that appear on the late night comedy programs since September 2022, and The Daily Show’s Jon Stewart is not a fan. On Comedy Central’s The Weekly Show Thursday podcast, Stewart went on an expletive-laden rant against Fox News for citing those studies, so we did the only natural thing we could think of in response: we also counted his podcast guests.
In 48 episodes since The Weekly Show began on June 6, 2024, up through July 31, 2025, Stewart has had 68 total guests, 61 or 90 percent of whom have been liberals. This list of liberals includes The Bulwark’s Mona Charen, who at one point in time was a reliable conservative but whose appearance was devoted to pre-election Kamala Harris promotionalism.
Of course Christy has to be a jerk about it. Nevertheless, Christy spent an Aug. 22 post whining again that his biased “studies” were called out:
Once again, somebody in the late night comedy show business is calling “bullshit” on my most recent late night guest count study. This time the man attacking my integrity, as well as that of my NewsBusters colleagues, was Pete Dominick, Stephen Colbert’s former warm-up act, on Sunday’s Sanity with Alisyn and Dave podcast.
Dave refers to Dave Briggs, who is now co-hosting this show with former CNN and Fox News colleague Alisyn Camerota. Briggs asked, “I do have one last question about Colbert and it’s, according to the stats, he hosted 176 left-leaning guests, one Republican since 2022, and I would guess a similar ratio with Fallon and Kimmel. Is that a mistake?”
While we at NewsBusters appreciate Briggs confronting Dominick with our studies, it should be noted that the late night guest rolling count began in September 2022 as a way to see how the comedy shows were covering that year’s midterm election, and it has turned into a semi-annual exercise. As for Fallon and Kimmel, their ratios as of the end of June were 20.5-to-1 and 29-to-1, respectively. Still pretty bad, but not as horrific as Colbert’s 176-to-1. Readers anticipating January 2026’s installment can look forward to Fallon’s ratio falling with his recent hosting of Fox’s Greg Gutfeld.
Christy groused further:
After Briggs informed him it came from NewsBusters, Dominick continued, “Yeah, it’s bullshit. Do you think that Colbert didn’t invite JD Vance and every single crazy right-winger on? They don’t come on with him because he’s too good at embarrassing them, and it makes no sense for someone.”
Briggs followed up, “You know that? Do you know that they tried to book conservatives?”
Dominick exclaimed, “Of course! It’s a bullshit statistic. You think Stephen Colbert is afraid of booking, like, anyone? No. That guy would love — He booked Trump. He would have anyone on that would go on, and he would rip them, and he would get huge ratings.”
Five things. First, I never claimed to do a study of invited guests because I am not privy to The Late Show’s internal deliberations; that would be impossible. Second, Colbert booked Trump back in 2015. As stated above, the study began in September 2022.
This defense reminds us of the time that Christy’s employer cheered how Republican politicians refused to go on CNN, then attacked CNN for not having enough conservatives on. We have no idea if the MRC is working behind the scenes to keep conservatives from going on the show so that Christy could pump up his numbers, but we wouldn’t put it past them.
Christy then got more defensive:
Third, if you listen to HBO’s Bill Maher, his problem is exactly the opposite: Republicans love to go on his show, while Democrats avoid him. Fourth, even if we assume Dominick is right, the study is about what the viewers see. If Dominick wants to challenge our opinion derived from the numbers, he can try, but he can’t call “bullshit” on the number itself.
Fifth, our critics may not believe us, but we are extremely generous to liberal media types in our studies. Most readers of this article would probably say former Rep. Liz Cheney is no longer a conservative, but she is counted as Colbert’s one Republican because she did sound like a traditional conservative when she challenged him on one point. Likewise, one of Kimmel’s conservative guests is Bill Burr, who is normally a pretty left-wing comedian, but he did manage to tell Kimmel something he didn’t want to hear about President Trump’s legal controversies. We also do not include foreign politicians on our list. If we did, Colbert’s liberal guest count would be even higher.
Of course, as one has come to expect, the methodology for Christy’s so-called studies is skewed because it doesn’t count every single guest:
Journalists were defined as either liberal or conservative, regardless of the segment’s subject matter. A celebrity was defined as either a current late night host if that host was on to be interviewed, political activist, or anyone famous who discussed politics or a religious project. If a celebrity is known to have strong political beliefs, but did not discuss them, they were not included.
Despite citing Maher as an example, Christy has never done a full guest ideology count for him — if he did, the total ideology count would be lower. And again, he did not explain why he won’t count guests for Gutfeld, though he added that “Readers anticipating January 2026’s installment can look forward to [Jimmy] Fallon’s ratio falling with his recent hosting of Fox’s Greg Gutfeld.”