Matt Taibbi, a journalist and writer for Rolling Stone magazine, is the author, most recently, of "The Divide: American Injustice in the Age of the Wealth Gap." He is on Twitter.

Jon Stewart started sixteen years ago as the host of a comedy talk show, and he walks away this week as maybe the most trusted news reporter in America. His success in stealing the thunder away from what we used to call the “straight news” business is the greatest and funniest joke he ever pulled off.

Some object to the characterization of Stewart as a journalist, because he “has opinions” and “isn’t objective,” but those people aren’t to be taken seriously. Opinion can’t be extracted from reporting. The only question is whether or not it’s hidden. Everything journalists do is a subjective editorial choice, from the size of headlines to the placement of quotes and illustrations.

Opinion can’t be extracted from reporting. The only question is whether it’s hidden. Stewart made his views clear and his reporting true.

Stewart kicked off "The Daily Show" just as Americans on both sides of the political aisle were becoming more conscious of editorial bias. Conservatives focused on who was doing the reporting (largely a blue-state bunch), while progressives focused on who owned the reporting (nihilistic profit-seeking corporations, mainly).

Both audiences got tired of trying to sift through hidden biases. So they searched for new and more dependable sources in the hundreds of new cable channels and the millions of new web sites that were appearing at the time.

Stewart told you who he was up front. And it wasn’t hard to figure out whether he was being honest. Jokes don’t lie. They’re either funny or they’re not. He was consistently funny, which meant he was consistently true. In an increasingly ridiculous world, that was something to hold onto.

While the commercial media responded to the fracturing news landscape by creating ideologically slanted television channels like Fox and MSNBC that were designed to capture left or right demographics for profit, Stewart remained his own person, ripping both parties. He hit the Republicans more, but only because they were more entertainingly ridiculous. He attacked the less cinematic cynicism of the Democrats regularly, too.

We live in a society now where people want to know who a journalist is before they decide whether or not to believe his or her reporting. Americans got to know Jon Stewart quickly and quickly learned to trust him even though he clearly had a point of view. It’s the highest praise a journalist can get, and he deserved all of it.



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