Bob Iger Slams “Inaccuracy” In News In Jon Stewart Sit-Down: “News Is Not News As Certainly We Knew It,” Ex-Disney Boss Says

“Look, people are not held accountable for inaccuracies, so there’s that issue,” former Disney kingpin Bob Iger says of today’s news media business.

“Then there’s the whole problem of profiting from, I call it inaccuracy, from opinion and from presenting things in an inaccurate fashion,” the now-retired executive said on the latest “Media” episode of Apple TV+’s The Problem with Jon Stewart that dropped Thursday

“I think if you are looking overall at the pot of what is considered news today, it’s a problem,” Iger added, never naming names but clearly leaning towards massive Disney shareholder Rupert Murdoch’s Fox News Channel. “So to answer your question, I don’t know what the answer is in terms of fixing it,” he admits. Watch the clip:

In one of his few on-camera appearances since officially exiting Disney late last year, Iger spills with Stewart about Fox News creator Roger Ailes hitting him up in the 1990s to run ABC News and the battle of “bias” that in his view has infected all news nowadays.

“That was a huge mistake at the expense of credibility,” he says.

Sounding a lot like soon to be Warner Bros Discovery board member John Malone, Iger harks back for a media of the three-network era. “A lot of what is presented, that people think is news is not news as certainly we knew it when we were growing and what we were taught news should be,” he tells Stewart. Here’s that clip:

Perpetual smooth operator Iger recently announced his first post-Disney venture: an investment in the metaverse avatar technology company Genies. Iger invested an undisclosed amount in the company, and also is joining Genies’ board.

The former Disney CEO also has weighed in on the controversy over Florida’s “Don’t Say Gay” bill, writing on Twitter on February 24 that if passed, the legislation “will put vulnerable, young LGBTQ people in jeopardy.” The legislation did pass the state legislature and proved a bit vexing to Iger’s successor: After initially declining to take a public stance on the bill, Bob Chapek reversed himself and announced opposition to the legislation.

Stewart’s latest episode is devoted to the media and also features guests Chris Stirewalt, contributing editor of The Dispatch and former politics editor of Fox News; Sean McLaughlin, the vice president of news at Scripps; and Soledad O’Brien, who has her own production company after serving as a CNN anchor.

At one point, Stewart seems surprised when O’Brien informed him that cable news producers see “minute by minute” ratings so they know what stories and topics stoke outrage.

“You get a minute-by-minute ratings printout at CNN?” he asks her. She responds: “Everywhere. Not just at CNN. You can tell what story was I in when the ratings went up.”

Stirewalt, who was fired from Fox News last year after he backed the network Decision Desk’s election-night call of Arizona going for Joe Biden, said, “Social media provides a morphine drip for these producers to keep them like, ‘OK, we’re in the zone. This is what the people want.’ “

“It has permeated the thinking in very profound ways and it has made us dumber,” he said.

Dade Hayes contributed to this report