“The Daily Show” aired a segment Thursday night that had reportedly led to a showdown between Native Americans and diehard Washington Redskins fans, although little of the hostility the team’s loyalists later said they experienced appeared to make the cut.
Jon Stewart eased into the segment with a disclaimer, likely because one of the fans interviewed by “Daily Show” correspondent Jason Jones, Kelli O’Dell, told the Washington Post earlier this week that she had asked to be left out of the segment. O’Dell said she had called the police after the taping because she felt threatened by the Native American activists.
“We learned later that some of the individuals who participated in the piece — they didn’t enjoy the experience. It’s something that happens a lot less than you would think,” Stewart said. “But we take the complaint seriously. We generally don’t want people who participate in the show to have a bad experience. We work very hard to find real people who have real beliefs and want to express those beliefs on television, and we work hard to make sure that the gist of those beliefs are represented accurately, albeit sometimes comedically on our program.”
“If we find out that someone in a piece was intentionally misled or if their comments were intentionally misrepresented, we do not air that piece. We would not air that piece,” he added. “So that being said, I hope you enjoy the following piece.”
The program didn’t air much of the apparently heated confrontation between the Native Americans and the Redskins fans, showing little more than what correspondent Jason Jones characterized as a “handshake” between one of the activists and O’Dell. There was no audio accompanying the footage of the meeting between the two groups.
“It turns out these fans weren’t comfortable having that conversation,” Jones said in a voiceover. “In fact, afterward they relayed to the Washington Post that they felt ambushed, in danger and defamed.”
“In the end they said they still would have gone on the show had they known there would be a debate, but at least one of them wouldn’t have worn his Redskins jacket,” he added.
Ultimately, at least two of the four Redskins fans interviewed by Jones said that they’d continue rooting for the football team under a different name.
Watch below, courtesy of Comedy Central:
