Jon Stewart launches a Kickstarter to buy CNN from Rupert Murdoch

Time Warner has already rejected Rupert Murdoch's $80 billion buyout overture, but on Tuesday night's Daily Show, Jon Stewart seemed pretty convinced that Murdoch will triumph in the end. Not that he's happy about the News Corp. mogul expanding his already huge media empire. "If he buys Time Warner," Stewart said, "news will just be shit Rupert Murdoch thinks." But if the sale goes through, at least Murdoch won't gobble up CNN, because of antitrust concerns over Murdoch's ownership of Fox News.

The expected asking price for CNN would be about $10 billion, Stewart said, which "is a lot of money for anyone — but not a lot of money for everyone." With that in mind, Stewart announced the launch of a Kickstarter campaign to buy CNN through crowdsourcing. You can see the prizes on the website The Daily Show set up for this bit, LetsBuyCNN.com. And what would Stewart do with CNN if he somehow raised $10 billion (and CNN actually goes on the block)? I guess that's fodder for a future episode. --Peter Weber

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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.