Stewart and Cramer are both entertainers.
Neither is a “journalist” nor would claim to be – though Stewart has by far the upper hand in self-righteous smugness.
No one in finance takes Cramer seriously in any way shape or form; nor ever did.
CNBC’s reporting is no better/no worse than any other station, specialist or generalist.

Cjcjc.

As I said, Jon Stewart’s programme goes out on Paramount Comedy. Cramer goes out on the Consumer News and Business Channel. That changes things a little bit; you may well be right that no-one in finance takes Cramer seriously. Not everyone in America is a finance professional. People in Scranton, PA, or Boise, ID, may well take Cramer seriously.

The entire point, though, is that picking on Cramer is a little unfair; as you say, “CNBC’s reporting is no better/no worse than any other station, specialist or generalist”. That means things are pretty bad.

xD.

Cramer is not a journalist. He’s a stock tipster.

It’s true that Cramer’s no worse than a lot of others – but if he’d let the first piece pass, it would have been a one-off and forgotten by now. Instead he decided to go after Stewart – which just confirms that his judgement is appalling.

“I’d hope that there was enough interest in ‘good’ reporting to avoid always going for the cheap and easy story.”

Two words: Manufacturing Consent.

Stewart has constantly said he’s an entertainer, and is disgusted that he has to be the one pointing serious things out in the US media

US reporting has been appalling for years. Just look at Bush and the press conferences. Greg Palast was getting front pages all over Europe and not one paper in the US would pick it up. (They eventually did about 3 years later, I think).

Whether Cramer is a serious analyst or not, US tv is very poor at reporting real news. Online sites are often better.

Epic FAIL.

This isn’t the first time Jon Stewart has done this – he was also instrumental in getting the ABC (I think?) show Crossfire cancelled after he laid into it on his own show, pointing out that it was an absurd political pantomime based on setting up ‘fights’ between ‘liberals’ and ‘conservatives’. There was rarely any effort at understanding the complexities of the problems facing the US, or any acknowledgement of positions outside of the two very constrained ‘mainstream’ positions. Stewart’s trump card was played when he simply, honestly, stated that he thought that this standard of debate was bad for America, actively harmful to political life. Once the truth had been said, there was no coming back for the show.

He’s trying to do it again with Cramer and CNBC and I think that it might work. It’s hard to see how they can carry on being taken even remotely seriously given how they have been exposed in this manner.

I wonder if the same could happen in Britain? Our biggest problem is the fact that our media failure isn’t televised – TV in Britain is fairly dull and politically unbiased. The real failure is in the newspapers, and it therefore generally falls to bloggers to take them on. Bloggers, however, tend not to be able to get the mass audiences that broadcast TV can get.

You can’t lose what you never had.

“An editor should have a pimp for a brother, so he’d have someone to look up to.”

– Gene Fowler

We don’t have any figure quite comparable to Stewart here, do we, but some of his functions/activities are in existence: Hislop for example, but he’s hamstrung by the panel show format and lacks much comedic appeal,Mark Steele’s not on TV much, and Mark Thomas tends to preach to the converted, because he’s veered away from broader comedic sensibilities .I would be delighted to see Chris Morris lay into the commentatriat/Westminster/financial reporting bubble dwellers.

Charlie Brooker may be about to fill this roll on BBC Four.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2009/01_january/29/newswipe.shtml

I wonder if the same could happen in Britain? Our biggest problem is the fact that our media failure isn’t televised – TV in Britain is fairly dull and politically unbiased. The real failure is in the newspapers, and it therefore generally falls to bloggers to take them on. Bloggers, however, tend not to be able to get the mass audiences that broadcast TV can get.

True, I was thinking the same…

We have tried to have something similar with the ‘Late Edition’ with Marcus Brigstocke, but it never really gained the same sort of attention the daily show gets- possibly because it is a bit too dry and was on late at night on BBC four.

Maybe we need to get John Oliver back from the Daily Show- he and Andy Zaltsman did some radio stuff via political animal which came close to the cleverness (if not popularity) of the Daily Show.

“Crossfire” was on CNN, Rob. But you are correct it was only a few weeks after Stewart was on as a guest that the show was canned.

In the run up to the Cramer Vs Stewart interview, hyped by all ‘News’ channels in the US Stewart took on the ‘fight’ and debunct what Cramer had been saying in the cross program ‘war’.

Stewart admitted on his show that he had no clue about how the market worked etc. You can get the video’s from the same site as those above.

I primarily watch CNN/MSNBC and on the odd occasion Fox – and I blog regularly about CNN – CNN is seen as a very liberal new station – it isn’t. Fox is a joke, MSNBC is supposed to be REALLY left – it isn’t.

The one person I can say has the same kind of leftish/liberal political hue is Jack Cafferty.

In a recent interview with Lou Dobbs (Mr Independent) who has a single issue stance on illegal immigration and how 12 million people should be removed from the US, and how comes across as as much a more eloquent Rush Limbaugh, Ted Turner (The founder of CNN) said then, that Dobbs, and others were too angry to report the news.

Watching the news presented to the US, and in my case Canada, you really can see why the US citizen feels that the worlds population hates them with a passion and how the US can make the world right – the presentation of the news in the US is, basically, the world is wrong and the US is right – that is until something happens like Obama being elected.

Now some, certainly not Fox, are taking a more pragmatic view.

I could go on but that would become tiresome.

I wonder if the same could happen in Britain?

Rory Bremner tried – but he’d have to ditch the impressions and focus on getting the point across first and foremost. Morris is much better at the ‘meta’ stuff – the way in which the media cover things, not individual stories (the ‘Paedophile Special’ of Brass Eye being the classic example). I’d pitch for a post-Newsnight ‘What the Papers Said’ satire on BBC 2, which as much input from bloggers as it can handle.

Bloggers, however, tend not to be able to get the mass audiences that broadcast TV can get.

100% agree with that.

Many who read this blog are those who are before there time in the sense that they do read blogs – I don’t have the figures to hand but you see a much larger proportion in North America who are will to read blogs than in the UK and I think Europe in general.

Those blogs that are read in the UK are mainly, but not completely, the blogs from the likes of the BBC, and national newspapers – they have the free advertising on their broadcast channels, or some other form to direct the viewer/readership to their own blogs for that. Of course that is for advertising revenue so you can’t blame them.

PS – the BBC heavily advertises on the international version of its website. If you have a British IP you won’t see that. Not all content is available internationally either.

I wonder if something like Target Women could work… Sarah Haskins is very good.

xD.

Cramer is not a journalist. He’s a stock tipster.

No. He’s a stock tipster *and* an experienced journo.

The America media is overwhelming right wing, and corporate owned. The bias of pundits that appear on the TV are slanted in favour of Conservatives by a margin of 2-1. Of the Democrats that appear many are Conservative Dems, that are not liberals. There is virtually no fact checking of the right wing pundits who are allowed to come on and spout bullshit most of the time.

We have seen 8 years of Bill Clinton when he had approval ratings of 60- 70 % and the country was enjoying peace and prosperity. Yet ,if you tuned to the American news media you would have seen shrieking right wing nuts putting forward every crack pot right wing talking point 24/7. When Bush became President the media switched from an attack body to a defence body. Bush was give a free ride despite the fact that the scandals in his office made Clintons sex affair look like small beer. By the end Bush had ratings in the early 20′s yet you would have thought he was the most popular president of all time by the coverage he got.

Now the Dems have got back into power, the media has switched back to attack mode. Despite being heavily defeated at the last election the number of Conservatives who appear on the shows has not diminished, and every right wing nut is allowed on to scream at Obama.

Jon Stewart’s show is about the most reliable news show in the US and yet it is a comedy show. Which teels you all you need to know about Americam mainstream journalism. The American media is about as un biased as Pravda. And is getting worse by the year.

“Stewart has by far the upper hand in self-righteous smugness.”

Well you would no all about self self-righteous smugness troll.

Stewart has made itclear that he is NOT a journalist ,but a comedy show. The fact that he does a better job than most American journalism shows how shit American journalism has now become.