Jon Stewart Unbleeped: ‘The Daily Show’ Leaves Some Choice Words Intact

“The Daily Show” is not changing its standards concerning which words it will bleep and which it won’t, though it might have seemed that way September 19. That was when Jon Stewart unleashed his latest satiric takedown of the Fox News network that included repeated use of what used to be called a “barnyard epithet.” It also used to be a word that did not make it onto the air on “The Daily Show” without the bleeping erasure from the network’s standards department. So what happened? Comedy Central executives did not want to comment on the record about the decision, because they did not want to signal that the show had done anything outside the usual standards of the network. But they said the tone of the piece, in which Mr. Stewart expressed some larger-than-usual incredulity at some reporting by the Fox channel, made it more important that the language stay intact in this one piece.