Feeds: 
symbol identifies content for paid subscribers only.
STEWART'S SMACKDOWN OF CRAMER AND CNBC.
Responding to Jon Stewart's massacre of Jim Cramer last night on The Daily Show, Andrew Sullivan writes:
What Cramer walked into was an ambush of anger. He crumbled from the beginning. From then on, with the almost cruel broadcasting of his earlier glorifying of financial high-jinks, you almost had to look away. This was, in my view, a real cultural moment. It was a storming of the Bastille. It was, as Fallows notes, journalism.
Only that's not what Fallows said. What Fallows said was that "I thought Stewart, without excessive showboating, did the journalistic sensibility proud." The distinction between "journalism" and "the journalistic sensibility" is significant. What Jon Stewart does on the Daily Show, exposing the doubletalk of our media lapdogs and national leaders, is an invaluable public service. But it is not "journalism". It is media criticism. It happens to be what non-reported blogs do best, and it's why so many reporters hate them. But what Jon Stewart did last night didn't involve reporting, it didn't involve learning anything about CNBC that couldn't be found out simply watching the network for a day or two. It's the kind of thing that you expect newspaper ombudsmans and media critics like Howard Kurtz to do instead of merely fluffing the reporters and media figures they're supposed to be reporting on. The most important part of the interview for me was this:
When you talk about the regulators, why not the financial news network? CNBC could be an incredibly powerful tool of illumination for people who believe there are two markets, one that has been sold to us as long term, put your money in 401(k)s, put your money in pensions, and just leave it there, don't worry about it, it's all doing fine. Then there's this other market, this real market, that's occuring in the back room, where giant piles of money are going in and out, it's transactional, it's fast. But it's dangerous, it's ethically dubious, and it hurts that long term market. So what it feels like to us, and I'm speaking as a layman, it feels like we are capitalizing your adventure, by our pension...And that it is a game that you know, that you know is going on, and that you go on television as a financial network and pretend isn't happening.As Glenn Greenwald writes today, this is the relationship that much of the press has with their sources. Rather than serving the public, reporters end up as mere pawns of the powerful. Just as CNBC became the public relations wing of the financial services industry, last year the cable news networks became the public relations wing of the Pentagon. Rather than looking critically in the run up to war with Iraq, the press repaid their access to Bush administration officials by uncritically reporting their claims.
What Jon Stewart has done by exposing CNBC's inversion of its fundamental responsibilities towards the public is significant, and sadly unique. But make no mistake, critics like Stewart cannot replace what networks like CNBC are meant to do. Hopefully, they can help shame them into accepting their responsibilities. But the state of journalism in America would not be so desperate if all we needed were more critics like Jon Stewart. What we need is for reporters do to our job better.
-- A. Serwer
COMMENTS (6)
"Rather than looking critically in the run up to war with Iraq, the press repaid their access to Bush administration officials by uncritically reporting their claims."
No post on this subject is complete without noting that this "fluffing" type of coverage you metion is reserved almost exclusively for Republicans.
I'm pretty sure that the MSM didn't spend the first seven weeks of George Bush's first term trotting out trial balloon after trial balloon traying to convince the Amiercan public that he has already failed as president.
Posted by: brewmn | March 13, 2009 10:36 AM
Note that several times, Cramer hauled out as a defense that he's known Liar X for years. This, intended to refute the proposition that media and subject have grown too close.
Posted by: Martin | March 13, 2009 11:11 AM
Not fair. Sure, what Jon Steward did "didn't involve learning anything about CNBC that couldn't be found out simply watching the network for a day or two". But for heaven's sake, what else IS reporting, anyway? I see articles on the front page of my local paper describing the most recent shenanigans of my local politicians, taking advantage of the public trust, and the best and most important parts of the article are all drawn from the public record. The fact that Jon is doing "media criticism" doesn't make him any less of a journalist than people who do "Congress criticisim". How does what you're saying here differ fundamentally from what you (rightly) criticized Ari Goldman of the J-school of doing? If Jon Stewart's interview with Cramer isn't journalism, I don't know what journalism is.
Posted by: Sam | March 13, 2009 11:59 AM
I have to disagree that this wasn't journalism on one major count. When Jon Stewart allowed Jim Cramer to answer his questions then turned around and presented evidence that Jim Cramer was lying THAT was journalism. Its the kind of journalism you don't see everyday either. If you watch Meet the Press or State of the Nation or any other talking head Sunday show you rarely if ever see the host challenge their guests on their answers. They do just like Cramer did and just take the words at face value even when there is a plethora of evidence that the person is lying. See: the run up to the Iraq war. And in point of fact just watching CNBC wouldn't have informed the viewer of Cramer's prior statements on how he manipulated the market and how he encouraged others to do the same. Yeah it was ALSO an indictment of the financial media but IMHO there is no denying that it was a textbook example of how an interview actually should go (minuse the cursing of course). The point is reporting is not repeating talking points given to you by our President or the CEO of a company. Reporting should be taking those statements and then actually investigating whether they are true enough. As Spencer Ackerman said this morning.
The internal professional standard for us -- and these are the things that really do light a fire -- in the wake of the Stewart interview should be, Do you want to get Jim Cramer'd, where all you have in the face of simple and commonsense criticism, is the abject plea that they lied to me or I tried.
Posted by: sgwhiteinfla | March 13, 2009 12:03 PM
Does 'fluffing' mean something different than it did five years ago? Ouch. Harsh stuff.
Posted by: TP | March 13, 2009 3:32 PM
While I enjoy watching Cramer every night, one must remember the show is primarily entertainment. The financial networks exist to promote their advertisers financial and investment products. Who would expect them to warn about the credit bubble or coming Washington national debt collapse which will destroy much of the remaining private wealth in America today or what this will do to the dollar, the stock market, bonds, gold or the real estate market?
China is now worried about their dangerous over investment in US Treasury obligations. Washington ’s long-term choice is either repudiation or monetization. For monetization to be effective, the depreciation in the dollar would have to be substantial and this in turn would dramatically raise prices of imports for American consumers which would mean a tremendous drop in foreign imports. Debt monetization would cause more disruption to exporting nations than selective repudiation of Treasury debt.
The Campaign to Cancel the Washington National Debt By 12/22/2013 Constitutional Amendment is starting now in the U.S. See: http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=67594690498&ref=ts
Thanks,
Ron with 30 plus years in the investment business and banking industry.
Posted by: Ron | March 14, 2009 3:24 PM