Guy Aoki

Guy Aoki is the Founding President of Media Action Network for Asian Americans (MANAA), the all-volunteer media watchdog organization founded in 1992.  For 25 years, he wrote “Into the Next Stage” for the Rafu Shimpo, the longest-running column on Asian Americans and the media.  In 2001, Aoki debated Sarah Silverman on Bill Maher’s “Politically Incorrect” over a racial slur she used in a joke on Conan O’Brien’s late night talk show.  In 2021, he got Jay Leno to apologize for his habit of making jokes about Koreans and Chinese eating dogs or cats after MANAA threatened to go after the advertisers of his game show “You Bet Your Life” if he wasn’t fired as host.  In the ‘80s, the Hilo, Hawaii, native worked at “American Top 40 with Casey Kasem” and was a Los Angeles Times reporter. For 17 years Aoki wrote syndicated radio shows for Dick Clark including “Countdown America,” which won a Billboard Magazine Radio Award.