CNBC/Stewart
- Kaldaur
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CNBC/Stewart
I'm surprised no one has posted anything here about the Jim Cramer/Jon Stewart show last night on TDS. What were your impressions of it? I thought Jon started out trying to be light, and then as he went further and further along, he was getting pissed. It was uncomfortable to watch, but then again, I'm sure it's been uncomfortable for people to have lose their investments. Whether or not their investments were tied up in CNBC's recommendations, it had to be therapeutic. The big question is, will this change anything, even to the slightest degree? I'm not suggesting that Jon Stewart will usher in a new era of financial journalistic responsibility, but could we see little tremors through the journalistic markets?
A white house press corp member talking to Gibbs today said something along the line of 'serious journalism' in regards to Stewart's piece, and to be fair, I tend to agree. He had the trademarks of journalism, or perhaps an editorialized journalism: the researched facts/clips of Cramer speaking, using quotations and past activities to paint a picture of the current situation. It's not straight journalism; it is entertainment, and any old school journalist will tell you that both sides need to be presented so as not to indicate bias. My mother has been a journalist, reporter, and professor for twenty years, and I've asked her about this. She says that the old method of presenting both sides, equally and without indication of favor, is undergoing some strain, especially in the current financial market. How can a responsible journalist present both sides, knowing full well that one side is erroneous or filled with deceit? The key here is that journalists today are a dying breed. The newspapers are disappearing, news has cycled into the 24-hour marathon for ratings and attention grabbing headlines. So how can journalists do the research that TDS manages without the team of researchers downstairs, digging up old TiVo and youtube clips? It used to be that for the ground-breaking exposes and investigative stories, months of preparation would go into a story, with time for research and traveling. Newspaper budgets don't allocate funds for that anymore; they are trying to survive, or else they are owned by companies who have stakes in the separate companies being investigated.
Can we salvage our field of journalism, or will more journalists be forced to seek out platforms similar to TDS to find real investigative work? And I'm not saying that TDS is investigative journalism. But maybe it's the first link in an evolutionary chain towards that eventual goal.
Anyway, I'd love to hear what you guys think on the issue.
A white house press corp member talking to Gibbs today said something along the line of 'serious journalism' in regards to Stewart's piece, and to be fair, I tend to agree. He had the trademarks of journalism, or perhaps an editorialized journalism: the researched facts/clips of Cramer speaking, using quotations and past activities to paint a picture of the current situation. It's not straight journalism; it is entertainment, and any old school journalist will tell you that both sides need to be presented so as not to indicate bias. My mother has been a journalist, reporter, and professor for twenty years, and I've asked her about this. She says that the old method of presenting both sides, equally and without indication of favor, is undergoing some strain, especially in the current financial market. How can a responsible journalist present both sides, knowing full well that one side is erroneous or filled with deceit? The key here is that journalists today are a dying breed. The newspapers are disappearing, news has cycled into the 24-hour marathon for ratings and attention grabbing headlines. So how can journalists do the research that TDS manages without the team of researchers downstairs, digging up old TiVo and youtube clips? It used to be that for the ground-breaking exposes and investigative stories, months of preparation would go into a story, with time for research and traveling. Newspaper budgets don't allocate funds for that anymore; they are trying to survive, or else they are owned by companies who have stakes in the separate companies being investigated.
Can we salvage our field of journalism, or will more journalists be forced to seek out platforms similar to TDS to find real investigative work? And I'm not saying that TDS is investigative journalism. But maybe it's the first link in an evolutionary chain towards that eventual goal.
Anyway, I'd love to hear what you guys think on the issue.
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Re: CNBC/Stewart
haven't watched it yet. been keeping up with it all week though. will watch when i get home and i'll probably have comments later!
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Re: CNBC/Stewart
I watched it last night, and thought about posting something about it earlier, but got busy and didn't get around to it. Stewart disemboweled Cramer. I *almost* started feeling for the guy a little. If it was a cage fight, it would have been called half-way through. I think it's funny that after hyping the "feud" every day since this started, the NBC family of networks is understandably silent today.
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Re: CNBC/Stewart
I was expecting more out of Jim Cramer, but he just sat there with his head down in shame for most of the interview. I do give him credit for actually showing up, though.
For the oppressed, peace is the absence of oppression, but for the oppressor, peace is the absence of resistance.
Re: CNBC/Stewart
I watched it and posted it on my blog. Sent out emails for people to watch it. Thought about posting about it here but I actually figured by the time I got home someone else would post it. And I was right. 
I think it was a good interview insofar as Stewart exposed CNBC's purpose. The truth is CNBC has a very small but very rich audience. But that is no excuse for the kind ofreporting broadcasting they do. Who's side are they on? That is the question.

I think it was a good interview insofar as Stewart exposed CNBC's purpose. The truth is CNBC has a very small but very rich audience. But that is no excuse for the kind of
I tell it like a true mackadelic.
Founder of Ixtlan - the SCUM of Veeshan.
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Re: CNBC/Stewart
Was out of town, but I just saw it tonight. It was definitely not your typical Daily Show. Cramer really got his ass chewed. I love how he kept setting Cramer up and letting him spew more of his bullshit, only to get shot right down.
When the world is mine, your death shall be quick and painless.
Re: CNBC/Stewart
I used to watch CNBC back in the late 90's and up through 911.
Back then when people were going nuts in the market with the Clinton .com bubble, CNBC would mention a stock and it would skyrocket. Those were also the days of Tokyo Joe, where you had someone targeting penny stocks for no reason other than they could be manipulated, they'd tell their inner group or readers, pump it and then release the pick to the general public as they dumped the shares.
Back then when people were going nuts in the market with the Clinton .com bubble, CNBC would mention a stock and it would skyrocket. Those were also the days of Tokyo Joe, where you had someone targeting penny stocks for no reason other than they could be manipulated, they'd tell their inner group or readers, pump it and then release the pick to the general public as they dumped the shares.
I remember his posts on the stock forums. He'd have a system of using certain ,,, ,,,,, patterns ,,typing,,,messages,,,,like this to tip off the people in the know when to sell of buy.'Tokyo Joe' Settles Suit With S.E.C. Over Web Site
By GRETCHEN MORGENSON
Published: Friday, March 9, 2001
Yun Soo Oh Park, owner of an Internet investing site that was one of the hottest sources of stock picks on the Web, has settled a civil complaint brought last year by the Securities and Exchange Commission.
Mr. Park, known to his subscribers as Tokyo Joe, neither admitted nor denied the S.E.C. charges, but agreed to pay $754,630 to settle the case.
In the case, filed in January 2000, regulators said Mr. Park defrauded his customers by buying ahead of his recommendations and selling as subscribers were getting in. The S.E.C. said that on 13 occasions, Mr. Park failed to tell subscribers that he was trading ahead of them, an illegal practice known as scalping. Regulators also charged that Mr. Park promoted one company to his subscribers -- who they said paid monthly fees of up to $600 for his stock picks and market commentary -- without disclosing that he had received shares of stock in the company in exchange for his recommendation.
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Re: CNBC/Stewart
I thought it was a fantastic interview (for lack of a better word) and he really held Kramer's/CNBC's feet to the fire. Although I am a huge fan, I think Stewart normally gives pretty soft interviews. This one was a little out of character, and very refreshing.
(edit MSNBC to CNBC .. oops)
(edit MSNBC to CNBC .. oops)
"Our problems are man-made, therefore they may be solved by man. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings." - John F Kennedy
Re: CNBC/Stewart
The second interview was nearly painful to watch.
Going out to play pool now with my fellow klan members. Have a nice night. - Midnyte
Re: CNBC/Stewart
The interview showed good, honest journalism at its best. On the other hand, this interview will probably have little influence on anything important, just as it seems is the fate that anything positive and worthy falls to nowadays.
Re: CNBC/Stewart
Actually... It appears Crossfire might be under some serious heat because of the Cramer interview. Cramer's ratings have gone down 24% recently while Stewart's have gone up 20%. Stewart is just the populist we need. Nothing / nobody has made me more hopeful.
And of course, MSNBC is being mum about this whole thing, making Stewart seem even more validated, if such a thing is possible.
And of course, MSNBC is being mum about this whole thing, making Stewart seem even more validated, if such a thing is possible.
- Xatrei
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Re: CNBC/Stewart
Two things just for clarity's sake. Crossfire is the name of a show that was canceled in CNN a few years ago after Jon Stewart made asses out of Tucker Carlson and Paul Begala while appearing as a guest on that show. Fast Money is the name of Cramer's show, and CNBC is his network, not MSNBC.
"When I was a kid, my father told me, 'Never hit anyone in anger, unless you're absolutely sure you can get away with it.'" - Russel Ziskey
Re: CNBC/Stewart
Yes, that.
- Spang
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Re: CNBC/Stewart
I want to have Jon Stewart's babies.
For the oppressed, peace is the absence of oppression, but for the oppressor, peace is the absence of resistance.
Re: CNBC/Stewart
Cramer does Mad Money. Fast Money is another CNBC show.
Cramer did a lousy job defending the network. It was almost sad. Fast Money is a completely different show from Mad Money and it's title is not indicative of the show' content in Stewart's mind which he felt was about making a quick and easy buck or something as he insinuated during the interview. It's one of the most educational roundtable discussions about the market presented in a fast paced setting unlike Mad Money which is Cramer hamming it up all over the place. I find Squawk Box to have to best, most interesting approach and writing. I hate Cramer's show and he was stupid not to defend the channel properly.
Not every show on the channel is designed to cater to all people/potential investors. Is CNBC supposed to be any different than any other news outlet and not try to gain an audience? They do it in the news, for sports news, for weather news, any news, so why not financial news?
In addition, CNBC.com is the main site I look to for financial news these days.
Cramer did a lousy job defending the network. It was almost sad. Fast Money is a completely different show from Mad Money and it's title is not indicative of the show' content in Stewart's mind which he felt was about making a quick and easy buck or something as he insinuated during the interview. It's one of the most educational roundtable discussions about the market presented in a fast paced setting unlike Mad Money which is Cramer hamming it up all over the place. I find Squawk Box to have to best, most interesting approach and writing. I hate Cramer's show and he was stupid not to defend the channel properly.
Not every show on the channel is designed to cater to all people/potential investors. Is CNBC supposed to be any different than any other news outlet and not try to gain an audience? They do it in the news, for sports news, for weather news, any news, so why not financial news?
In addition, CNBC.com is the main site I look to for financial news these days.
- Xatrei
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Re: CNBC/Stewart
Yeah, my bad. Mad Money is what I meant, and I didn't even notice I'd spaced out until you mentioned it. Cramer is annoying as hell, and I can't stand to watch him for a second, but I do actually watch Fast Money occasionally.
"When I was a kid, my father told me, 'Never hit anyone in anger, unless you're absolutely sure you can get away with it.'" - Russel Ziskey
Re: CNBC/Stewart
Erin Burnett of CNBC is hot.

She does a great job (entertaining) as an anchor on CNBC.

She does a great job (entertaining) as an anchor on CNBC.
Re: CNBC/Stewart
Obama should be the one grilling CNBC.
Re: CNBC/Stewart
I wish I was hot so I could be that stupidErin Burnett wrote:“You know, I think people should be careful what they wish for on China. You know, if China were to revalue it’s currency, or China is to start making toys that don’t have lead in them or food that isn’t poisonous their costs of production are going to go up and that means prices at Wal-Mart here in the United States are going to go up, too.”

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-- G W Bush, freelance writer for The Daily Show.
June 2005 - "The mission isn't easy, and it will not be accomplished overnight"
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Re: CNBC/Stewart
I liked the Stewart/Cramer interview and I hope it makes Cramer re-think his show a little... I love that Stewart basically slammed the whole networks level of journalism and repeatedly asked the question of who are they working for.
Fash
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Re: CNBC/Stewart
Jon Stewart slammed all of professional journalism, not just Cramer or CNBC. The best journalist on television right now is a comedian.
For the oppressed, peace is the absence of oppression, but for the oppressor, peace is the absence of resistance.
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Re: CNBC/Stewart
FYI Winnow, that maxim page is a fake.
Re: CNBC/Stewart
Kaldaur wrote:FYI Winnow, that maxim page is a fake.
Kaldaur coming through with the due diligence!
Re: CNBC/Stewart
Cramer is part of the new journalism. It is not their job to investigate, only to ask questions and undoubtedly accept whatever answers they are given. This has been going on for a long time throughout the industry.
Here is a great article.
Here is a great article.
Glenn Greenwald wrote:There's nothing unique about Jim Cramer
Jon Stewart is being widely celebrated today and Jim Cramer/CNBC widely mocked -- both rightfully so -- for Stewart's devastatingly adversarial interview of Cramer (who, just by the way, is a Marty Peretz creation). If you haven't yet seen the interview, you can and should watch it here; if you watch only one segment, watch the middle one and the beginning of the third.
Stewart focuses on the role Cramer and CNBC played in mindlessly disseminating and uncritically amplifying the false claims from the CEOs and banks which spawned the financial crisis with their blatantly untoward and often illegal practices. Here is the crux of Stewart's critique of Cramer/CNBC:
STEWART: This thing was 10 years in the making . . . . The idea that you could have on the guys from Bear Stearns and Merrill Lynch and guys that had leveraged 35-1 and then blame mortgage holders, that's insane. . . .
CRAMER: I always wish that people would come in and swear themselves in before they come on the show. I had a lot of CEOs lie to me on the show. It's very painful. I don't have subpoena power. . . .
STEWART: You knew what the banks were doing and were touting it for months and months. The entire network was.
CRAMER: But Dick Fuld, who ran Lehman Brothers, called me in - he called me in when the stock was at 40 -- because I was saying: "look, I thought the stock was wrong, thought it was in the wrong place" - he brings me in and lies to me, lies to me, lies to me.
STEWART [feigning shock]: The CEO of a company lied to you?
CRAMER: Shocking.
STEWART: But isn't that financial reporting? What do you think is the role of CNBC? . . . .
CRAMER: I didn't think that Bear Stearns would evaporate overnight. I knew the people who ran it. I thought they were honest. That was my mistake. I really did. I thought they were honest. Did I get taken in because I knew them before? Maybe, to some degree. . . .
It's difficult to have a reporter say: "I just came from an interview with Hank Paulson and he lied his darn-fool head off." It's difficult. I think it challenges the boundaries.
STEWART: But what is the responsibility of the people who cover Wall Street? . . . . I'm under the assumption, and maybe this is purely ridiculous, but I'm under the assumption that you don't just take their word at face value. That you actually then go around and try to figure it out (applause).
That's the heart of the (completely justifiable) attack on Cramer and CNBC by Stewart. They would continuously put scheming CEOs on their shows, conduct completely uncritical "interviews" and allow them to spout wholesale falsehoods. And now that they're being called upon to explain why they did this, their excuse is: Well, we were lied to. What could we have done? And the obvious answer, which Stewart repeatedly expressed, is that people who claim to be "reporters" are obligated not only to provide a forum for powerful people to make claims, but also to then investigate those claims and then to inform the public if the claims are true. That's about as basic as it gets.
Today, everyone -- including media stars everywhere -- is going to take Stewart's side and all join in the easy mockery of Cramer and CNBC, as though what Stewart is saying is so self-evidently true and what Cramer/CNBC did is so self-evidently wrong. But there's absolutely nothing about Cramer that is unique when it comes to our press corps. The behavior that Jon Stewart so expertly dissected last night is exactly what our press corps in general does -- and, when compelled to do so, they say so and are proud of it.
At least give credit to Cramer for facing his critics and addressing (and even acknowledging the validity of) the criticisms. By stark contrast, most of our major media stars simply ignore all criticisms of their corrupt behavior and literally suppress it (even if the criticisms appear as major, lengthy front-page exposés in The New York Times).
Perhaps the most egregious instance of this media cowardice is that there are very few occasions when media stars were willing to address criticisms of their behavior in the run-up to the war. With very few exceptions, they have systematically ignored the criticisms that have been voiced from many sources about the CNBC-like role they played in the dissemination of pre-Iraq-War and other key Bush falsehoods. But on those very few occasions when they were forced to address these issues, their responses demonstrate that they said and did exactly what we're all going to spend today mocking and deriding Cramer and CNBC for having done -- and they continue, to this day, to do that.
One of the very few television programs ever to address the media's complicit dissemination of Bush's pre-war falsehoods was Bill Moyers' superb 2007 PBS documentary, Buying the War. While most of the media propagandists whom Moyers wanted to interview cowardly refused to answer questions, Tim Russert, to his credit, did appear. Here are the excuses which Russert offered for the general role the media played in spreading Bush administration lies and the specific role Russert played in uncritically amplifying Dick Cheney's assertions about Saddam's nuclear program. I challenge anyone to identify any differences between what Cramer/CNBC did and the justifying excuses Russert offered:
BILL MOYERS: Quoting anonymous administration officials, the Times reported that Saddam Hussein had launched a worldwide hunt for materials to make an atomic bomb using specially designed aluminum tubes.
And there on Meet the Press that same morning was Vice President Cheney:
DICK CHENEY (MEET THE PRESS NBC 9/8/02): … Tubes. There's a story in the NEW YORK TIMES this morning, this is-- and I want to attribute this to the TIMES. I don't want to talk about obviously specific intelligence sources, but--
JONATHAN LANDAY, MC CLATCHYS: Now, ordinarily information like the aluminum tubes wouldn't appear. It was top secret intelligence, and the Vice President and the National Security Advisor would not be allowed to talk about this on the Sunday talk shows. But, it appeared that morning in the NEW YORK TIMES and, therefore, they were able to talk about it.
DICK CHENEY (MEET THE PRESS NBC 9/8/02): It's now public that, in fact, he has been seeking to acquire and we have been able to intercept to prevent him from acquiring through this particular channel the kinds of tubes that are necessary to build a centrifuge and the centrifuge is required to take low-grade uranium and enhance it into highly-enriched uranium which is what you have to have in order to build a bomb.
BILL MOYERS: Did you see that performance?
BOB SIMON, CBS: I did.
BILL MOYERS: What did you think?
BOB SIMON: I thought it was remarkable.
BILL MOYERS: Why?
BOB SIMON: Remarkable. You leak a story, and then you quote the story. I mean, that's a remarkable thing to do. . . .
TIM RUSSERT (MEET THE PRESS), TO CHENEY: What specifically has [Saddam] obtained that you believe will enhance his nuclear development program?
BILL MOYERS: Was it just a coincidence in your mind that Cheney came on your show and others went on the other Sunday shows, the very morning that that story appeared?
TIM RUSSERT: I don't know. The NEW YORK TIMES is a better judge of that than I am.
BILL MOYERS: No one tipped you that it was going to happen?
TIM RUSSERT: No, no. I mean-
BILL MOYERS: The Cheney office didn't leak to you that there's gonna be a big story?
TIM RUSSERT: No. No. I mean, I don't have the-- This is, you know-- on MEET THE PRESS, people come on and there are no ground rules. We can ask any question we want. I did not know about the aluminum tubes story until I read it in the NEW YORK TIMES.
BILL MOYERS: Critics point to September Eight, 2002 and to your show in particular, as the classic case of how the press and the government became inseparable. Someone in the Administration plants a dramatic story in the NEW YORK TIMES. And then the Vice President comes on your show and points to the NEW YORK TIMES. It's a circular, self-confirming leak.
TIM RUSSERT: I don't know how Judith Miller and Michael Gordon reported that story, who their sources were. It was a front-page story of the NEW YORK TIMES. When Secretary Rice and Vice President Cheney and others came up that Sunday morning on all the Sunday shows, they did exactly that.
My concern was, is that there were concerns expressed by other government officials. And to this day, I wish my phone had rung, or I had access to them.
BILL MOYERS: Bob Simon didn't wait for the phone to ring.
BILL MOYERS: You said a moment ago when we started talking to people who knew about aluminum tubes. What people-who were you talking to?
BOB SIMON: We were talking to people - to scientists - to scientists and to researchers, and to people who had been investigating Iraq from the start.
BILL MOYERS: Would these people have been available to any reporter who called or were they exclusive sources for 60 MINUTES?
BOB SIMON: No, I think that many of them would have been available to any reporter who called.
BILL MOYERS: And you just picked up the phone?
BOB SIMON: Just picked up the phone.
BILL MOYERS: Talked to them?
BOB SIMON: Talked to them and then went down with the cameras. . . .
WALTER PINCUS: More and more, in the media, become, I think, common carriers of Administration statements, and critics of the Administration. And we've sort of given up being independent on our own.
Compare Russert's self-defense to how and why he uncritically amplified Government lies ("I wish my phone had rung") to Cramer's pretense of victimization over the fact that CEOs lied to him and so there was nothing he could do but assume they were telling the truth ("I don't have subpoena power"). Stewart's primary criticism of Cramer applies with exactly equal force to the excuse offered by Tim "Wish My Phone Had Rung" Russert, who -- to this day -- is held up as the supposed Beacon of Tough Adversarial Journalism in America:
I'm under the assumption that you don't just take their word at face value. That you actually then go around and try to figure it out.
The point that can't be emphasized enough is that this isn't a matter of past history. Unlike Cramer -- who at least admitted fault last night and said he was "chastized" -- most establishment journalists won't acknowledge that there was anything wrong with the behavior of the press corps during the Bush years. The most they'll acknowledge is that it was confined to a couple of bad apples -- The Judy Miller Defense. But the Cramer-like journalistic behavior during that period that was so widespread and did so much damage is behavior that our press corps, to this day, believes is proper and justified.
The only other occasion when media stars were forced to address these criticisms was when Bush's own Press Secretary, Scott McClellan, wrote a book accusing the American media of being "too deferential" to the administration. In response, Russert's replacement, David Gregory, twice insisted that the criticisms directed at the press for the role they played in the run-up to the war are baseless and misguided -- most recently in an interview with Stephen Colbert (after defending the media's pre-war behavior, Gregory was promoted by NBC to his Meet the Press position). When defending the media's behavior, Gregory echoed exactly the defining mentality of Jim Cramer: pointing out when officials are lying is "not our role," said Gregory.
During that same time period, two of the three network news anchors (with Katie Couric dissenting) defended the media's pre-war behavior as well. In fact, this is what ABC's Charlie Gibson said -- echoing the Cramer view of journalism -- after Couric argued that the media failed to do its job in scrutinizing pre-war Bush claims:
It was just a drumbeat of support from the administration. And it is not our job to debate them; it's our job to ask the questions.
Identically, The Washington Post's David Ignatius actually praised the media's failure to object to pre-war Bush lies as a reflection of what Ignatius said is the media's supreme "professionalism":
In a sense, the media were victims of their own professionalism. Because there was little criticism of the war from prominent Democrats and foreign policy analysts, journalistic rules meant we shouldn't create a debate on our own. And because major news organizations knew the war was coming, we spent a lot of energy in the last three months before the war preparing to cover it.
It's fine to praise Jon Stewart for the great interview he conducted and to mock and scoff at Jim Cramer and CNBC. That's absolutely warranted. But just as was true for Judy Miller (and her still-celebrated cohort, Michael Gordon), Jim Cramer isn't an aberration. What he did and the excuses he offered are ones that are embraced as gospel to this day by most of our establishment press corps, and to know that this is true, just look at what they do and say about their roles. But at least Cramer wants to appear to be contrite for the complicit role he played in disseminating incredibly destructive and false claims from the politically powerful. That stands in stark contrast to David Gregory, Charlie Gibson, Brian Williams, David Ignatius and most of their friends, who continue to be defiantly and pompously proud of the exact same role they play.
I tell it like a true mackadelic.
Founder of Ixtlan - the SCUM of Veeshan.
Founder of Ixtlan - the SCUM of Veeshan.
- Kilmoll the Sexy
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Re: CNBC/Stewart
The media is not about getting facts right anymore. The mainstream media is not involved in investigative journalism either....they are involved in sensationalist journalism. All they care about are ratings that mean they can charge more for advertising. Period. Everything I see as "news" I view as entertainment that may or may not contain degrees of truth or information. If you trust a free network show that tells you how to make money on your investments, then I am questioning as to why they are giving that info out for free.
Freedom of the press shall not be infringed, but they should be held liable for misinformation.
Freedom of the press shall not be infringed, but they should be held liable for misinformation.
- Xatrei
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Re: CNBC/Stewart
This is another of those occasions where Kilmoll and I agree on something, for the most part. I don't agree with the position commonly held by right-wing people that it's the "mainstream media" as if the MSM exclusively engages in this behavior. The niche operations beloved by the MSM-haters are just as guilty for their own reasons. Political leanings aside, they share the same common agenda as the reviled MSM: the eyeballs that translate into dollars. All for-profit news operations are, for the most part, too eager to shape their reporting for ratings and to preserve their access to the people and organizations of importance or power, aka the newsmakers (Note: this is also true for many, but not all, not-for-profit news operations on the left, right and center who must shape their reporting to keep their benefactors happy and the funding that pays their salary flowing). Critical thinking has now largely been outsourced from the reporters and editors to the news consumers. Unfortunately, it's a skill that too few people possess or employ when absorbing stories from "trusted" news sources. Any given news story should be treated as merely one piece of data that contributes to a larger narrative. One should try, whenever possible, to take information from multiple sources and think about what the reporter is telling the audience as well as what his motivations may be in the effort to find the critical nugget of truth that should be the story proper.Kilmoll the Sexy wrote:The media is not about getting facts right anymore. The mainstream media is not involved in investigative journalism either....they are involved in sensationalist journalism. All they care about are ratings that mean they can charge more for advertising. Period. Everything I see as "news" I view as entertainment that may or may not contain degrees of truth or information. If you trust a free network show that tells you how to make money on your investments, then I am questioning as to why they are giving that info out for free.
Freedom of the press shall not be infringed, but they should be held liable for misinformation.
"When I was a kid, my father told me, 'Never hit anyone in anger, unless you're absolutely sure you can get away with it.'" - Russel Ziskey
Re: CNBC/Stewart
horrifying
Re: CNBC/Stewart
Part of this goes into our own societal schizophrenia: we make rules, we tell people to obey them, we lay out consequences if they get caught breaking them and we say its the duty of everyone to ensure the rules are enforced, then we blacklist whistleblowers. We tell our kids from childhood those things and then 5 minutes later when they come to us reporting a sibling/friend/some other kid did something"no one likes tattle tales", because we don't want to deal with it and even in our recreation we get gems like the sports adage "if you ain't cheatin', you ain't tryin' ". Seriously, you can see it in almost every facet of life and society: someone pulls shit and people react from outrage to apathy to scorn according to how the consequences of a "rule violation" affect them personally: it was one of the hallmarks of how this forum was founded, in giving a people some place to go to argue about conflicts (and violations of various codes of conduct) in EQ.
With the Jim Cramer style of show, it goes a step further because he uses his professional reputation and personal connections as leverage to get some guests on. To give us the "insider's view" we (as the public) say we want and now we lambast him for not infringing on and endangering those relationships. I suppose there is a degree of fairness to that insofar as he brought some sources of "disinformation" (for lack of a better term) into the public spotlight but I don't blame Cramer in a lot of ways, because I agree with the article Xyun posted: he's not an aberration but a typical example of what most reporting has degenerated into, and at least he did answer Stewart's challenge and take his lumps. Its actually ironic that the most honest reporting does come from comedians and places like sports/entertainment beats, where the actual impacts on our lives are (supposed to be) all but superfluous.
And in some ways crucifying Cramer is a red herring because he wasn't the one that allowed the banks to make shitty investment decisions that endangered themselves and the entire system built on them, in their quest for higher profits: that was a lack of oversight by the US gov't and its various agencies (that baseball steroid congressional hearing shit looks even more important now doesn't it?). I think this whole thing highlights a basic truism and flaw in the Benjamin Franklin "Laissez Faire" school of capitalist philosophy: there is no more powerful force than human greed, even to a point where it endangers self preservation. Greed can be a powerful motivator at times but you need limits imposed on it.
With the Jim Cramer style of show, it goes a step further because he uses his professional reputation and personal connections as leverage to get some guests on. To give us the "insider's view" we (as the public) say we want and now we lambast him for not infringing on and endangering those relationships. I suppose there is a degree of fairness to that insofar as he brought some sources of "disinformation" (for lack of a better term) into the public spotlight but I don't blame Cramer in a lot of ways, because I agree with the article Xyun posted: he's not an aberration but a typical example of what most reporting has degenerated into, and at least he did answer Stewart's challenge and take his lumps. Its actually ironic that the most honest reporting does come from comedians and places like sports/entertainment beats, where the actual impacts on our lives are (supposed to be) all but superfluous.
And in some ways crucifying Cramer is a red herring because he wasn't the one that allowed the banks to make shitty investment decisions that endangered themselves and the entire system built on them, in their quest for higher profits: that was a lack of oversight by the US gov't and its various agencies (that baseball steroid congressional hearing shit looks even more important now doesn't it?). I think this whole thing highlights a basic truism and flaw in the Benjamin Franklin "Laissez Faire" school of capitalist philosophy: there is no more powerful force than human greed, even to a point where it endangers self preservation. Greed can be a powerful motivator at times but you need limits imposed on it.
Wulfran Moondancer
Stupid Sidekick of the Lambent Dorf
Petitioner to Club Bok Bok
Founding Member of the Barbarian Nation Movement
Stupid Sidekick of the Lambent Dorf
Petitioner to Club Bok Bok
Founding Member of the Barbarian Nation Movement
Re: CNBC/Stewart
Wulfran wins. Fuckin humans.
Re: CNBC/Stewart
journalism will continue to get worse. news rooms are shrinking drastically. lack of bodies translates into lack of reporting, translates into reporting what they want you to report. blame the Internet. greedy humans wanting their free news.
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knock knock
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Bobbysue - WoW - 70 Hunter - Hyjal - <Hooac>
HOOAC 4 EVAH!
knock knock
who's there
OH I JUST ATE MY OWN BALLS
- Dregor Thule
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