The famous video interview between Jon Stewart and Jim Cramer, on The Daily Show (in 3 parts):
Immediately after the Daily Show interview, I posted this to my Twitter: “Cramer v. Stewart: guess Cramer is the scapegoat for fact that “news” is now entertainment. CNBC wasn’t created to keep WallSt in line.” (Apologies for the fail grammar and punctuation. It’s Twitter.)
This wasn’t an interview. It was Jon Stewart reading Cramer the riot act, which is great if you want to see Cramer being read the riot act (and I know many of you do – I’m gonna leave ripping Cramer a new one up to Jason if he wants to do it, ‘cuz he’d do a better job than I would). Cramer really was passive, like to the point where you wonder if someone told him just to go out there and take shit, and Stewart was happy to festoon him with all of the network’s perceived fail.
Stewart seems to be under the impression that CNBC should be functioning as some kind of Wall Street watchdog – completely missing the point that activist journalism, investigative journalism, reporting for the sake of the truth, all of those good things as we knew them, are all unfortunately dead. Bill G and I had this convo during the show, and I agree with most of what he said:
It doesn’t matter – as long as he gets ratings. But Stewart thinks that Jim should be some sort of reporter or investigative journalist. What is he, crazy? Those people no longer exist! They died out in the 80s! It doesn’t pay for the network to pay attention to high minded journalism. It does pay to cater to Joe Average, who doesn’t know anything about finance and just wants somebody to tell him what to buy or sell. That’s Mad Money.
As for Fast Money – those guys are for short term traders. It’s pretty obvious. Regular people with long term investments who wouldn’t know a put from a call will get nothing out of Fast Money and shouldn’t watch it. Kudlow? That’s a political show! No information there. CNBC during the daytime is just a market reporter/commentator. No substance there either – just babes reporting numbers. CNBC after 9pm involves annoying women telling idiots how to get out of debt, and the rest of the time is filled by informercials.
Investigative journalism doesn’t get ratings unless it has something to do with missing white children, or holier-than-thou politicians meeting escorts at hotels (Cramer weighed in on Spitzer, but mercifully, I don’t recall him ever addressing Caylee Anthony), and networks are ratings engines.
So my final words to Jon Stewart: don’t hate the player, hate the game. Stewart got very, very close to the real problem when he pointed out that the Daily Show sold snake oil, and asked why Cramer wouldn’t admit that he sold snake oil, too; everyone sells snake oil, because it’s what there’s a market for, and bitching at one guy for not printing SNAKE OIL SALESMAN on his business cards is not going to scare him out of the snake oil business, because going into a different business isn’t viable.
Also, for what it’s worth, Jon wasn’t the only Stewart that Jim Cramer hung with yesterday. He spent the morning with Martha:
Martha [Stewart] suggested that he take the banana cream pie they would make later on the show. Cramer, who has been known to throw a few pies at the television screen, was holding out on whether to use it as a weapon on [Jon] Stewart.
“I can turn it into a gift if he’s kind to me,” Cramer said.
Had he actually brought the pie, I don’t think it would have been delivered as a gift.
doctor robert // Mar 13, 2009 at 1:36 am
Jon has always lamented that all news has become entertainment, financial news just makes for a better target. Sure if Fox or MSNBC doesn’t report properly, our democratic foundation is being torn apart, but thats not as visually obvious as the Dow tanking 800 points in one day. Sure he is being a bit of a dreamer when he wishes that investigative journalism was back in force, but can you blame him? yeah he runs a comedy show, but that comedy show was making a big fuss over Guantanamo way before any other “news” network was. You read interviews with him and he views his role as a editor of the daily show much more than his role as the host.
As per scapegoating Cramer, I thought Jon tried to make it obvious several times that he was attacking CNBC, and that Cramer was sent in by CNBC. Not that I feel bad for the man, he is that snake oil salesman. The one thing i disagreed with on the interview was the complete lack of accountability for the people that bought the snake oil. I understand that you can pity their situation, that they aren’t quite as educated, but do you really need a fancy degree to understand that money isn’t free, it doesnt just magically grow. It was greed on the part of everyone that did us in.
and if going into other businesses instead of selling snake oil isn’t profitable, well then it shouldnt be done
Jason // Mar 13, 2009 at 5:22 am
I didn’t see it because it’s on waaaaaay past my bedtime, but I didn’t expect Jon to be kind. When he gets on a roll about this stuff, he’s brutal. Let’s not forget his appearance on Crossfire where he may very well have singlehandedly killed that show.
I think my actual beef with Cramer, quite apart from any perceived incompetence that I have joked about from time to time, is that he does not host an investing advice show, he hosts an entertainment show and simply doesn’t realize it.
alyx // Mar 13, 2009 at 7:38 am
I think it’s quite possible you’ll never be able to give the general public a show that is both -entertaining- and -solidly factual- on the topic of investing. You will not capture a general audience by reading from 10-Ks, but you will by screamimg and throwing things and maybe sneaking in a chart here or there.
Mark Dowling // Mar 13, 2009 at 7:45 am
I read (NYT maybe?) that JS has 4x audience than CNBC’s top rated show. Since CNBC’s core audience of superannuated daytraders are now broke, they have to find young-middleaged folks who still have money to invest.
Hmmm… where could we find those…
alyx // Mar 13, 2009 at 7:47 am
Exactly! Ratings!
When Cramer was on Martha Stewart’s show, he said he was thrilled the Daily Show was taking him on, because “now my kids know I have a TV show” or something like that. I figured he was only half kidding.
Jason // Mar 13, 2009 at 8:13 am
And let’s be honest, The Daily Show caters to an audience still young enough not to have had their idealism stomped out of them by the harsh jackboot of reality, so most of what he does is couched in pure populism. He’s the John Edwards of TV, with worse hair and no bastard babies. Shoot, I do the same thing here most of the time because it’s easy.
All that said, when I do catch CNBC (which isn’t often but I do tune in for at least a few minutes a day until I yearn to see someone fail at flipping a house and then it’s off to TLC), what I take away from it more than anything is an overall hero-worship of the kings of industry and finance by the network’s talking heads. It’s like watching Larry King interview someone, with dollars. There can be no expectation of their holding feet to the fire when they are groveling at those same feet. Yeah, CNBC is a huge joke, but the only other viable finance network, Bloomberg TV, is buried in the digital cable channels between Boomerang and The Fish Tank Channel, so what are you gonna do?
TonyS // Mar 13, 2009 at 8:20 am
Alyx, you disappoint me greatly, dear. So to cement my position firmly in the “Less cynical than Alyx” camp, and to hopefully get you on board with having some kind of hope, allow me to present you with another tidbit from Jon.
He was on C-SPAN, talking to some stuffed shirt about God knows what in front of a sea of reporters, and was lamenting about Fox News and how they keep touting about their “point of view” and that point of view is nothing more than pandering to their right-wing audience, the truth be damned.
Jon’s response was “Couldn’t there be a news network where their point of view is that they actually care about the truth?”
A reporter stood up in the audience and involuntarily blurted out “BUT IT WOULDN’T MAKE ANY MONEY!” Jon responded “I think it would make a SHITLOAD of money! And if anyone wants to start such a network, I will put up a couple million of my own money to get it off the ground.”
I had never been prouder of the guy than I was at that moment. But since you appear to be laboring under the same delusions as the reporter, try this one on for size:
The sound effects and crazy shenanigans are COMPLETELY beside the point. Cramer could give good advice and still use them, or he could give bad advice and not use them.
Apparently what we really have is him knowingly giving false information out to the public. What do you think the ratings would do if people suddenly started making money by following the advice on this guy’s show?
Ratings are not the issue. Honesty and basic human decency are. If he knows that AIG is going to crash, then he can put all the bomb sound effects he wants over it, turn on a red siren light, burn it in effigy, whatever… as long as he’s honest about the fact that he knows that AIG is going to crash.
If he instead openly talks about trying to manipulate the price of Apple stock, that is criminal… any way you fucking slice it. Jon was right to chew him out for that one, and CNBC can’t claim ignorance in the name of “ratings”. Their ratings would be better if they gave good advice.
alyx // Mar 13, 2009 at 8:45 am
I think Cramer’s perfectly within his rights to openly talk about trying to manipulate the price of Apple stock when he is talking hypothetically to an audience of non-retail investors (e.g., that video from TheStreet.com, which is not stolen or leaked footage or anything like that as far as I know, which could have made it more scandalous).
That reporter/Stewart exchange probably wasn’t talking about a FINANCIAL news network, either. Take the tricks and schlock out of CNBC and you get Bloomberg network, which I do watch but which my non-financial-industry friends have openly ridiculed me for watching if they come over and see it on my television.
TonyS // Mar 13, 2009 at 9:10 am
And I’ve caught some flak for reading LOLFed… from my brother-in-law, who has an economics degree.
I guess I just dont get how you could possibly not believe that getting important information out in a funny way is a very important and worthwhile job, given that both you guys and Stewart do it so well.
And as a bonus, the ratings for such things tend to do very, very well.
The way I see it, demand for anything isn’t static… as a seller, you can manipulate it. So when I hear sellers bitching about “But there isn’t a market for honest journalism!” then my bullshit alarm goes nuts and I think “Maybe that’s because you’ve spent decades sculpting demand until the public wanted a product you could more easily produce?”
We get what we pay for.
LoLo,ESQ // Mar 13, 2009 at 9:19 am
Lolfed > an economics degree
TonyS // Mar 13, 2009 at 9:32 am
LOL that’s what I told him.
Jason // Mar 13, 2009 at 9:45 am
Take the tricks and schlock out of CNBC and you have thirty minutes of content every day and nine hours of P90X infomercials overnight.
Bill G // Mar 13, 2009 at 3:49 pm
Tony S has me wondering – how much would it really cost to start up a new network that featured “honest journalism”? Anybody know? And what are the barriers to entry for such an endeavor in a world where TV networks and cable companies are owned by extremely large corporations?
Whatever it is, don’t expect Jim Cramer to change his tune. It’s not his tune anyway, it’s General Electric’s, played by Jeff Zucker and Jeff Immelt, and he’ll keep dancing to it.
TonyS // Mar 13, 2009 at 4:40 pm
And therein lies the rub, Bill G… to start an honest ANYTHING, we would have to watch ourselves VERY carefully. We’d have to be a private entity (so that we didn’t have conflict of interest between “making more money than all the other bastards” and “being honest”) and we’d have to carefully vett any money or personnell coming into the building to make sure that they also valued honest journalism over dollars.
Note that I’m not saying that dishonest journalism pays better… I did and still do believe that honest journalism pays better and gets higher ratings. But the PERCEPTION that dishonest journalism pays better is out there, and that perception (plus all the habits that have developed along with it) is a real phenomenon.
All of that having been said, I would consider myself very privileged to work at such a place, and if I had the first damn clue about journalism, I would have taken Jon up on his offer back when I heard it.
vialiy // Mar 13, 2009 at 7:43 pm
McClatchy Newspapers is a very serious journalism outlet. Its stock is at fifty cents, down from $11 a year earlier.
abe // Mar 14, 2009 at 1:11 pm
As we’ve seen, a market completely unchecked will get into all sorts of trouble. Jon Stewart is saying that there’s no reason CNBC (and other journalism outlets) can’t be a check on the market and report abuses in the market, just like it reports on abuses in gov’t. Letting people know that there IS a problem is always the first step to correcting that problem.
Which is why the “honest journalism” that Jon Stewart suggested is exactly what we need. Of course, there’s the little problem of every newspaper in the country bleeding red ink these days.
Walter Isaccson had an interesting cover story in Time a while back about how to “save the newspapers”. The way I see it, he hit the nail on the head by saying that we, as citizens, need to start paying for quality journalism. As Bill G noted above, CNBC answers to its corporate parent, and its advertisers, because they pay the bills. If the citizens paid most of the bills (doesn’t necessarily need to be all), then the journalists would answer to us, and give us the quality journalism we want.
How we go about it is trickier, because I’m not sure that I would like to keep track of “micropayments” for every click I make on a newspaper website. But I’m thinking that if the newspaper charges a subscription fee to read the news online, and they could get influential people like Jon Stewart to get their audience to see the benefits of subscribing, it could provide a critical mass.
Of course, this is the web, and what good is a website if you can’t forward links to your friends? So you need to allow users to forward links to their friends, and at least a few of those friends to view the article for free. However, because of the forward, the friends might see the benefits of subscribing as well, so there’s a viral factor there.
Like TonyS, I would love to be a part of something like that.