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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 Carmer 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 was on The Hugh Hewitt Show last night discussing the Charles Freeman controversy. That show can be heard here, and the transcript is here.
- Posted in
42 Comments so far
Show AllOnce again, GG nails it.
People like Cramer and Bernard Madoff are not solely swindlers. What seems to animate swine like them is not just money and not just the hustle but a profound and utter contempt for others. To fuck people over the way they have indicates a degree of cynicism which to me is as unfathomable as it is common. They represent what the United States has become, what it has sunk to - the largest ongoing scam in the history of the world. That's the "Legacy" of Reagan, Clinton and the Bushes: Dear American Sheep, I'm grinning and I say fuck all of you. Every time I steal a dime from you it's like having sex with a beautiful woman and experiencing a 10 on the Richter Orgasm Scale, then injecting myself with some of the greatest heroin in the world. No wonder the Republicans won't change. Say what? You want to go back and manufacture furniture and shoes? LOL!
Excellent point.
I've known quite a few financial hustlers who would much rather clip a buck than make five legit.
Excellent point.
I've known quite a few financial hustlers who would much rather clip a buck than make five legit.
I agree "he nails it". But this has been the media behavior since forever. They did not question Kosovo (working with the KLA who were real terrorists), the 1991 Iraq War (the Princess who masqueraded as a nurse telling about the babies being taken out of incubators), invasion of Panama (Noreiga), etc., etc., to VietNam (CBS ran I Love Lucy reruns instead of the congressional hearings about the Gulf of Tonkin).
You need to travel.
AMERICA's 'highly lauded liberal' captive jacka$$ $ewer Main $tream Media is obliviously 99.44% corporate controlled -- but what is news is that this is NOT true to that extent anywhere else ( except China … ).
With great privilege ( and power) comes along great responsibility -- but most AMERICANS are gleefully clueless and pompa$$.
We see ourselves as mature and experienced, whilst the rest of the world laughs ( carefully behind our backs ) at how childish and spoiled we are in our seething illusions and pretenses.
Oh, making bombs equates to killing people and bribing gov't--- NO ( tell me it isn't so, please ) !
Namaste
Thanks to DaveBronstein and casssandra for reminding us that there's nothing new here, just history repeating itself as we---once again---have failed to learn from it. "Freedom of the press belongs to him who owns one" is not just a witty aphorism, but a useful reminder of actual power relationships here in the "cradle of democracy."
As U.S. citizens in the twilight-of-capitalism 21st century, we're finding ourselves in the exact same position as citizens of the late Soviet Union: having only Pravda (the Communist Party's "newspaper of record," and the only one not illegal to possess) to provide their information, they developed reading between the lines into a high art form.
We've labored far too long under the illusion that we have a press which works as Jefferson assumed it would. There's no practical difference between having only one source of news and having many sources saying the same thing. To these millionaires in thrall to billionaires, such as Russert, Friedman, Williams and the like, we should offer another pithy quote: "...fool me twice, shame on me."
Very well put, Mr Greenwald. I've been bitching about the crappy news in this country for at least 15 years, now. I wrote a letter to a local news station that at one time had decent news, and had sunk to the Brittney Spears stupidity along with everyone else, and asked them why they were doing such useless garbage. I explained that the purpose of them even being in existence was to give us the information we needed to be able to make intelligent decisions at the ballot box. I got a letter back saying "That's YOUR opinion". And they wonder why I never watched them again.
It seems that we have an entire news media that thinks that opinion is fact. They have dumbed down everything to the point where there isn't any real reason for the MSM to exist anymore. They serve no real purpose that furthers anything but the wishes of big money, anymore. And that of course, was the purpose behind the Media Consolidation act, something I will NEVER forgive Bill Clinton for.
What I find amazing about the whole situation that we find ourselves in with the 24 hour a day "news" channels is that they have the time to go after some real in depth reporting, to get to the bottom of some things, and really tell a story. But they don't. They complain about not having enough to report on to fill the day, but they refuse to do actual reporting.If they would actually DO some reporting and some investigating, they would have FAR more than enough to talk about. Instead they talk about Lindsay Lohan and her girlfriend like that means anything to anyone.
And for the record, it IS the job of reporters to ask questions, and not just the canned ones, but the ones that show when a politician is LYING. It's THEIR job to call them on it. It's their job to tell us when a politician is a lying scumbag, and to not let them off the hook. In that respect, it IS their job to debate these people. It's their job to call them on their lies. It's their job to say "but what you just said is clearly against the facts as we know them". Case in point is the very recent statements of Ari Fleischer, who said that after we got attacked on 9-11, it was W's job to make sure that Saddam didn't attack us again. He hadn't attacked us the FIRST time! But no one called him on it and called him out for the liar he is. It's the job of those asking the questions to say "But wait a minute, he DIDN'T attack us at all", rather than to just let that go by.
But I guess that my generation's "newpeople" would just rather let liars lie than stand up for the truth. Shame, that. They should have taken their messages and education from those who didn't let that happen, people like Severeid, Brinkley and Cronkite. Instead, they are just cowards, all of them.
Exactly right and well put. The dumbing down of America, to grease the skids of empire, begins and ends with the media and TV. The airwaves we own are being used to destroy thoughtfulness and critical thinking---so that we accept the neoliberal construct that enriches the corporations. Help! We're sinking in a sea triviality, while the world burns around us.
"the purpose of them even being in existence" is to make money for the shareholders by selling advertising. If crap draws more advertising revenue, then crap will be shown. People apparently enjoy crap.
G L E N N __ G R E E N W A L D,
You are awesome, relentless, articulate, sharp, thorough, and passionately alive.
Thank you for your honest _ r e a l _ professionalism, authenticity, and ponderously abundant productivity.
Please DO let us know, if you at times get your inspiration from CD, and our rattling about while dynamically embellishing upon such wondrously fertile seeds ( and forests ) that you throw our way.
Blessings.
Namaste
I wouldn't be so quick to praise Jim Cramer. If you want to know more about Jim Cramer's conflicts of interest and how he personally profits from manipulating the market via short selling, see http://www.deepcapture.com/
One of the most important investigative stories I've ever seen.
Sioux Rose
SR: I've read the whole article and it shows Cramer up to his eye balls in the crap passing for sound fiscal reporting. They pushed the game, passed out the chips, worked the tables and then all hide behind the notion that someone lied. How convenient, as Dana Carvey's "Church Lady" (from SNL) would put it!
Big TDS fan, but praise for JS should be limited - he's had Williams and Gregory and Gordon on a number of times and he never calls them on their shit. It's all jokes and fun and deference. Same when he used to interview Russert... come to think of hit, most "msm" guests receive the same treatment.
Interviews are necessarily a dance, between players -- and the tough issues are nonetheless open game the following days.
Jon can be quite feisty and indirectly nod his true opinions, right in front of the pundidiots -- but most wisely he appears to also desire to cultivate an environment where other celebs still want to participate in.
Without TDS having the expectation of hard-hitting news ( being primarily comedy ), they do deliver accurate news substantially beyond anyone else on TV these days.
An adversarial environment wouldn't do for provoking much laughter !
Namaste
Jon is a (Duh!) COMEDIAN...
One of our greatest ideals formulates in the notion news and journalistic reporting of current affairs and government -at one point in history- was something of a people's voice rather than a broadcast tool to disseminate information to the masses. The areas of depth and revelation for the voter, the populist, or the consumer, tend to come in the investigative works, the academic journal, and in editorial summations. Allegedly, the roundtable discussion on networks is intended to emulate these areas. Instead, the roundtable appears more often as an extension of the current affairs page. The current affairs pages are routinely hacked together at such speed that unreferenced data, allegations, and innuendos are printed as leads. Retractions of sources and figures are often issued in the following days or weeks or months, long after the effects of the headline are felt. One should expect the reporter or channels most exploitable would be manipulated by interested parties.
One of the best sideshow events in US media is watching PR being manipulated by the WH press releases and conferences, and seeing who or when journalist X is avoided or embellished by the podium –but the real circus is watching the recycling of the raw conference I just watched in the roundtable broadcast format. This is why Jon Stewart and The Daily Show buffoonery of the whole process is effective. To a greater or lesser extinct, the dissemination of current affairs is at such a level of distortion, viewers of TDS are inclined to trust the buffoonery as a more accurate assessment as opposed to the official record. This avenue first exploited by SNL then leads to the hybridization by the commercial market and we end up with the Keith Olbermann and O’Reilly model of unabashed punditry marketed as news.
A lot of the fun of Stephen Colbert's Washington Press Corps performance a few years ago was the cutaways to the audience. A few, let's say, unaffiliated people were being highly entertained, but there was a lot of nervous laughter and nervous faces on display. The reactions were a bit of a primer on who held power, and it's worth re-watching to see the eyes darting about in case the wrong person saw one laughing at the wrong thing. Colbert's jabs at the Joint Chiefs was met with total stone silence.
It says a LOT about US culture that one has to watch THE COMEDY NETWORK to see any hard hitting investigative journalism today.
And Cramer is an ass-clown. He should join Bernie Madoff for a hundred or so years. These people have STOLEN YOUR RETIREMENT!!!
"The only means of strengthening one's intellect is to make up one's mind about nothing, to let the mind be a thoroughfare for all thoughts." - John Keats
'pointing out when officials are lying is "not our role," said Gregory'
The corrupt press cater to elite interests, as long as the people consent to it. Everyone, the elites, the press, and the people, share responsibility for the resulting damage to the public interests. Each has to take the initiative, to bury elite interests, and embrace the public interests. Of course, it is foolish to expect elites to do this voluntarily, hence, the people's obligation to rise up.
I never even heard of Jim Cramer until this row with Obama's policies started. I can see us attacking Rush et al, but Cramer voted for Obama, right? Is this how it is gonna be? Question Obama and your career is over?
What on earth does Cramer's vote have to do with anything in this discussion?
I took it to mean that he is in favor of tighter regulation on Wall Street.
T X _ P R O G R E S S I V E
Yeah, trying to second guess paid shills ( like chinesedemockery ) is a real challenge these days, especially when their usual purpose is just to create havoc. misdirection, and misunderstanding -- toward other readers and it's ALL about hidding the PRIMARY message -- that they so much want to eclipse.
If I'm wrong, I'll apologize -- but just look at his other neoCONing postings.
Namaste
The brilliance of Jon Stewart and Bill Moyer is that each of them show by example time and time again exactly how real journalists are supposed to proceed. Even though Stewart's forum is a comedy oriented show, his coverage of Administration stupidity and duplicity was unparalleled, newsworthy and repeatedly put the lazy, gutless, clueless, self delusional, main stream media talking heads to shame.
Among other things, Stewart and Moyer do their research, are prepared, ask genuinely tough questions, don't let the interviewees get away with avoiding the questions. Better yet, when they have the evidence, they point out the real facts versus the obvious lies and "spin" most interviewees want to peddle.
Would that there were lots more like the tell-it-like-it-is Stewart and the gentle but implacable Moyers. God knows this country desperately, desperately needs journalists to once again start doing their job. The ones calling themselves journalists at MSNBC must have been sleeping through journalism school and the ones who pretend to be journalists at Fox News must have only gone to schools that advertise on matchbook covers if they went to school at all. They certainly must have flunked ethics if they went at all.
Signed: Lawlessone [for more irreverence, see resistence-is-possible.blogspot.com]
Tough Adversarial Journalism died with Barbara Frum.
It has been said that in some royal courts, only the jester could tell the king an unwelcome truth. It has long been the role of the best comedians to tell the truth (think George Carlin, Richard Pryor, Bill Hicks, etc.), so Jon Stewart is playing his appropriate role (as he said simply during this dust-up, "This is what we do.")
What bothers me the most is not that a comedian was required to tell an obvious truth in a necessary way, but that a comedian seems to be one of the very few voices in the media who is NOT lying. Jim Cramer is a pathetic little worm. What I wouldn't give to have Jon Stewart take the same approach to Alan Greenspan on the topic of fundamental flaws in free-market capitalism.
In science, "models" are touted as "simplified versions of reality" used to develop insight and test hypotheses. Economics likes to pretend its models too are simplified versions of reality when, in fact, they are simplified versions of ideology. This is why economics has more in common with religion than science. "Invisible hand" my arse.
And why Economics is a Social Science rather than a true science at just about all colleges. in fact, I know of none. Beyond that, MBA degrees are the equivalent of 'moron by agreement.'
"Economics likes to pretend its models too are simplified versions of reality when, in fact, they are simplified versions of ideology."
SO TRUE!! Is it just a coincidence that people who are ideologically in favor of a welfare state are also believers in the effectiveness in Keynesian fiscal policy and vise-versa. In principle, the questions of efficacy and morality should be unrelated.
Do TV commentators have to have any training or credentials? It seems to me that there must be a semester in which they learn to say the word "ABsolutely" and to sprinkle the phrase "if you will" at random intervals in their patter. They must have classes on teeth whitening, hair, ties and scarves. Then they can have a trademark gimmick like Cramer, or the strippers in Gypsy.
Joe
The real estate section is for selling real estate, the travel pages are for selling vacations and the business section is for selling stock. I would like to see the critique of the coverage of economic issues extend beyond what we have seen to date. If the actual operations of the companies were covered, if we were told what the businesses were supposed to be doing, whether they were good at it, whether they provided a service that people actually needed, we could dispense with the distraction of stock market coverage. Example: can anyone describe the business ENRON was supposed to be in? I don't know. But the business they actually were in, borrowing money and calling it "making money", is,even today as Bernie Medoff is taken to jail, being pursued.
glen
what you are doing is very important
keep going bro
it grows.........
Jim Cramer is simply another info-tainment shill. Anyone who needs Jon Stewart to point that out ought to be watching Sesame Street instead of Cramer's silly dreck that masquerades as "investment advice".
"Seditious March 14th, 2009 3:11 am
Jim Cramer is simply another info-tainment shill. Anyone who needs Jon Stewart to point that out ought to be watching Sesame Street instead of Cramer's silly dreck that masquerades as "investment advice"."
Evidently true, but also true is what Glenn Greenwald says in this article, that Cramer's far from unique among U.S. "news" media pundits, reporters, ... whatever. So what you say certainly doesn't apply to only Cramer. Glenn Greenwald is also right about Cramer at least not speaking in denial, having acknowledged that he did not provide qualitative reporting as he should have. GG's right on both of those counts, and the U.S. msm "news" media is ... "the pits", say.
I wish Jon Stewart would invite Amy Goodman on. Or Steven Colbert would give Amy the Colbert bump. She is the anti-Cramer. Her piece on predatory student loans, for example, was eye-opening.
Problem would be - how to make truthfulness entertaining. I hope they will work on that one.
Joe
"Problem would be - how to make truthfulness entertaining. I hope they will work on that one."
That does seem to be the key underlying a lot of this, but whose fault is it--the viewers or the news stations? If having good reporting means losing your viewership, then what can we expect?
Jim Cramer sort of alludes to this when he states "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."
To me this just completely supports Chomsky's propaganda model. They can't have guests on and then completely slander them because they need to be in the good graces of these people in power to get them to come back. The simple truth is that George Bush can skip the invite to Democracy Now! and the public won't get outraged. Maybe the tide will turn on public opinion regarding corporate media now that so many people have been personally affected by these political issues. The level of awareness does seem to be heading in the right direction.
Listen to this quote from Ignatius: "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." Three months, during all of which Bush was pretending that his administration was seeking alternatives to military action, etc. War as only a last resort, and all that B.S. No thinking American believed Bush at the time (tells you how many there were), but for the news media to fail to question the events - inexcusable.
These news organizations are worse than incompetent, worse than complicit.
Go back and look at the TV screen frames that the networks used once the invasion began: it clearly had the appearance of cheerleading, using all of the political catch phrases issued by the Bush administration. They simply replaced "Super Bowl XXXII" with "War on Terror," or "Responnse to 9-11," not for a moment questioning what invading Iraq had to do with 9-11. For heaven sakes, just this week Ari Fleischer again said (to Chris Matthews) that in 2003 the US needed to make sure that Saddam Hussein had to be stopped "from attacking us again." That guy belongs in the looney bin, not being taken seriously by a talking head. What, is this now such old news that it's now time to "move forward"? We continue to live a lie, and the corporate media have become the liars.
Ignatius proves his utter failure to engage in journalism, along with his sorry peers.
I am continually surprised about how much of a dither we get ourselves into over these allegations when the Godfather of allegations, of criminalality, both in terms of the government and the mainstream press is still lingering, like a denied complex, right under the surface, just waiting to explode. And that is 9/11.
Let's just skip all the bullshit and get to the greatest, most destructive and scary story in the history of the US and most likely the history of civilization, the complicit coverup of September 11, 2001, by our government, our press, our leaders, our congress, at least 99% of the aforesaid!!
J O R G E _ M M _ 1,
Yes, the Alpha and Omega of as yet unrecognized purposeful disasters, that if acknowledged, would make matching bookends along with the current financial destruction.
The entire world is being had, for the warmongering profiteering of a select wicked few , who care not in the least for America, morality, manifold suffering and death of millions, integrity, honor, freedom, nor responsibility and accountability -- their greed justifies anything and everything.
Namaste
I am not about to provide a general defense of David Ignatius but in a sense he is right. During the drum-beat to the war ... where were all of the Democrats, many of whom had or should have had, or should have demanded access to intelligence reports? They were playing drums. And, get ready for this, where were all of the Democrats during the past 20 years of buildup to the economic collapse? They, like their Republican colleagues, were having lunch after lunch with lobbyists for the investment industries. Still not sure, then answer this, "what happens to legislators who do sound warnings?" Answer: They get branded as kooks and margenalized ... ask Kucinich.
Don't like the situation you are in now? Where was your voice 10, 20 years ago? Is everyone out there in CommonDream land totally debt free? I'm not.