Read 2 good pieces on HuffPo about the Cramer vs Stewart thing from last week. I also watched Cramer’s Friday night show where he made fun of and dismissed the “confrontation” as if Stewart had a problem mostly with his show. Most of the media portrayed it this way, including former CNBC roving reporter Mike Hegadus: Mike Hegedus: Jon, You’re Wrong. It is a Game, and You’re a Player!
Cramer took a verbal pounding, said his “mea culpa,” and spent most of the show looking like someone who had just been caught shop lifting a candy bar. Sorry, it won’t happen again. Stewart rode in on his charger, about the size of an Icelandic horse, poked and prodded and yelled at Cramer and then made sure to tell Jim that the economic crisis that we’re in is not a “….@$#%^%$$##@…game!!!!!!”He’s right, the economic issues we all face are not a game, but his show is. And they both played it. Cramer and CNBC have never had this much publicity. And while they both come out of it with a slight odor, little is likely to change. There’s nothing like the stink of notoriety. And the same goes for Stewart — how many more folks watched his show because he had Cramer on? How much more polished is his white knight “armour” now that he’s “slain” the evil Booyah? You think that was part of the plan?
The unfortunate piece of this is that Jim Cramer isn’t all of CNBC. Whatever aroma is attached to him will seep now onto the other hard working folks at the network who get up early and stay late to report on the actual financial happenings of the day. The fact that they don’t have the resources available to them to uncover the shenanigans that Stewart keeps harping about is not their fault. It’s a problem faced by all of journalism and something to be discussed at length at some other time.
And Jon Stewart is not a journalist. He’s a civically engaged entertainer, who apparently as frustrated as the rest of us with the economy went looking for someone to hammer. My suggestion Jon is next time find a bigger nail.
It’s like Ari Fleischer defending Bush. News organizations shouldn’t be excused if they don’t have the budgets to gather news. They should get out of the business or relabel themselves as newstainment. Anyone investing any money without the proper information being uncovered by a free press would be doing little more than playing craps in a casino. That’s the point. The parallels to the Iraq war (as identified in the next article) are startling. Lack of information turns our democracy into China. So if those hardworking guys at CNBC were covering things properly and doing their jobs, I’m sure there’d be no odor on Cramer.
Near the end of the interview (which, if somehow you haven’t seen it, is worth watching), Cramer begins to weasel out an explanation to Stewart (the specifics are unimportant, but if you need to know it involved why Cramer utilizes banana cream pies in his financial program) when Stewart interrupts him and says, indignantly, “As Carly Simon would say, ‘This song ain’t about you.’” It was a point largely lost on Cramer, who continued to defend his own show against Stewart’s much larger indictment, but it was also a point lost on the many media outlets that covered this basic cable dustup as actual, honest-to-god news.You see, Stewart’s real critique wasn’t about Cramer, it was also only marginally about CNBC. Instead, Stewart’s real rage comes from the role the modern media has created for itself: the role of cheerleader instead of watchdog, of favoring surface over depth, of respecting authority instead of questioning it.
It’s the same critique that some have about the New York Times (and the rest of the media) in the leadup to the war in Iraq; the same critique lobbed every time a TV reporter does a stand up in front of the Apple Store before a product release; the same critique leveled every time a sensational murder steals a headline from a corporate crime: is this really the job we want the fourth estate to be doing?
Just take a gander at some of the other leads around the web–surprisingly, Stewart didn’t actually command attention from everywhere:
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But none of these stories–Ana Nicole Smith, Michael Jackson tickets, Michelle Obama giving an interview to Good Morning America–pass muster either. None of them address the issues of our time with the fearless tenacity that Stewart brings to his show most nights, and he’s a comedian.
When we can’t compete with a comic in terms of speaking truth to power, then it’s more clear than ever that journalism in the US has lost its way. It comes as no surprise then when, as newspapers crumble around the country, a report like the one released by the Pew Research Center this week says that only 33% of people would miss their local newspaper “a lot.” When you lead with a story about an interview that happened on a comedy show–and it’s the very same story that almost everyone else is leading with as well–what’s to miss?
What’s to miss–the refrain is always repeated–is the investigative reporting that helps to keep our leaders honest, our water clean, our businesses pure. What’s to miss is people asking fearless questions to those that need them asked. What’s to miss is the deep pockets that can fund a reporter to dig and dig and dig until she’s able to uncover some fragile truth. And yes, that stuff is vital to the functioning of a democracy. It also, let’s speak the truth here, doesn’t happen very often.
Traditional news organizations have nothing to lose right now. Why not take a gamble at the one thing they haven’t tried: being fearless. Stewart would probably appreciate the company.
Rachel Maddow talks about the vanishing newspapers and in-depth journalism all the time. I suppose the one group that doesn’t want to talk about it are the media organizations themselves. How else would they be able to justify things like asking Victoria Jackson for her enligntened opinion on politics.
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