Stewart, Cramer, and the heart of the problem

There's nothing unique about Jim Cramer - Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com:

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). [...]

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.

[...transcript included...Key quotes:

Cramer: I had a lot of CEOs lie to me on the show.  It's very painful. I don't have subpoena power. . . .[...]

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.

I note that a few months ago, I said exactly the same thing over the Republicans vs Democrats on the ANWR and other drilling, where the media continued to mindless repeat that the "Democrats Say" blah blah blah.

Dude! Joe's Jottings, Mostly Junk - media rants for the day...:

ok, this has been the news media's take on this for the last 4 days: "Democrats say" over and over and over and over again. The he said she said objectivity of the media, particularly the AP, on this (non-)vote has driving me fucking nuts.

Hey news media! I'm not paying you to tell me what "Democrats say" - I'm paying you to actually LOOK IT UP AND TELL ME IF THEY ARE LYING!!!!

You have been playing this "Democrats Say" card for 4 days, implying that they might be lying or simply wrong, and absolutely holding an uncertainty over us for something where THE REAL FACTS WOULD BE DAMN EASY TO FIND given your resources.

GO LOOK IT UP, DO SOME RESEARCH, AND TELL ME SOME TRUTH, DAMMIT!

In fact, I know that the full report would take more time than the 12 seconds you allocate to this on WTOPNews, but consider this:

If you look it up and find its true, you can stop saying "Democrats Say" every time and bring it down to 10 seconds, giving you more time to say something else! Or if its not true, you can add the line "but research shows they are wrong" - 2 more seconds to the article, but at least we can make an informed decision on it rather than relying on unsupported speculations...

Greenwald continues with a discusion about the morning of the Dick Cheney interview on Meet the Press, that very day that the Times just happened to have published the leaked "aluminium tubes" story that became the Iraq smoking gun (a story discovered later to have been leaked by Cheney's own office), about how the Times "got the phone call" and Russert didn't and defending that "he wished he got the phone call".  Bill Moyers poiniently asked (and Greenwald echoed), "why didn't you pick up the phone yourself and call someone?"

There's nothing unique about Jim Cramer - Glenn Greenwald - Salon.com:

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 ["pointing out when officials are lying is 'not our role'"], Charlie Gibson ["And it is not our job to debate them; it's our job to ask the questions"], Brian Williams, David Ignatius ["journalistic rules meant we shouldn't create a debate on our own"] and most of their friends, who continue to be defiantly and pompously proud of the exact same role they play.

Why is a scandal where a politician lies about his sex life worth all the investigations and headlines in the world, enough to almost take down an administration, while a scandal where a politician (or businessman) lies about lies about torture, lies about war, lies about imprisonment of innocents, lies about financial dealings, lies about science, lies about the influence his religion has on his political decisions, lies about the very things we put him in office with our own honest trust, not worth an inch of column on page 10, or relegated to the "opinion" columns where, in spite of the evidence presented, the paper can keep an appearance of "objectivity" in place as "opinion" can't possibly be based on facts [with columnists like George Will, and the 'Post ombudsman who defended him, sadly reinforcing that stereotype].

[However, when a rampant religious homophobe is caught lying about his own homosexual practices, that's worth page 1. You don't get to claim religious (self-)righteousness to remove the rights of others while at the same time sharing their most intimate feelings and actions you so openly condemn.  Ditto those who would call out for an affair to lead to leaving office when it's the opposition, but then say "we forgive you" when it's your own party - I can ignore an affair of a public official but I will not condone hypocricy.]

It is not being "objective" when one side is lying and the other telling the truth and you know the difference but won't openly say it.  It is being a disgrace to your profession and to the First Amendment that makes what you can do even possible.  You show you hold this Constitution in contempt.

No wonder you keep losing readers and audience figures to the two men most willing to point out the bullshit, each in their own way: Stewart and Colbert.

When journalists stop repeating the lies of our leaders and instead point them out more consistently, it might, it just might, lead to a new type of government where lying isn't the order of the day.