What Next Mr. Cramer, Mr. Stewart?
A quick note: Thomas Jefferson noted that country-wide education ". . . is the true corrective of abuses of constitutional power," the only way a democracy can thrive.
For those who've been hiking in Patagonia or sunning themselves on Phuket beaches this last week, cable shows have exploded with recriminations that culminated last Thursday night with Jon Stewart grilling CNBC's Jim Cramer and then raking the seared flesh with salted broken glass. (cieldumort gives a great linkage synopsis over at the_recession.)
Folks, what CNBC did over the years was entirely predictable. Why it was predictable, though, Stewart never really mentioned.
Yes, Jon accuses the network of knowing about instabilities in the financial markets but not reporting on them, of sucking up to and glorifying the very CEOs who created this mess with excess and unchecked leverage. What he does not do: Note that if the network had hired some deep investigators and run stories years ago that could have brought down the more profitable practices and many of the CEOs who practiced them, they would have quickly lost ad revenue from those firms and access to those same CEOs. CNBC's very business model forced the compromises that caused it to avoid confrontations unavoidable to true journalists.
What happens next? Because of this business model, CNBC cannot turn on a dime into the Washington Post of financial journalism. They can't afford to. What happens next becomes a poignant question when one considers that NBC affiliates have decided to keep the matter quiet. This whole thing might just blow over.
If that happens, if CNBC continues to bill itself as something other than a financial syncophantic monolith and chooses to ignore its ethical responsibility to educate and inform its viewers, this country will have no tools to correct the excesses that caused this financial clusterfuck and will continue its ignorant sink into fiscal oblivion.
For those who've been hiking in Patagonia or sunning themselves on Phuket beaches this last week, cable shows have exploded with recriminations that culminated last Thursday night with Jon Stewart grilling CNBC's Jim Cramer and then raking the seared flesh with salted broken glass. (cieldumort gives a great linkage synopsis over at the_recession.)
Folks, what CNBC did over the years was entirely predictable. Why it was predictable, though, Stewart never really mentioned.
Yes, Jon accuses the network of knowing about instabilities in the financial markets but not reporting on them, of sucking up to and glorifying the very CEOs who created this mess with excess and unchecked leverage. What he does not do: Note that if the network had hired some deep investigators and run stories years ago that could have brought down the more profitable practices and many of the CEOs who practiced them, they would have quickly lost ad revenue from those firms and access to those same CEOs. CNBC's very business model forced the compromises that caused it to avoid confrontations unavoidable to true journalists.
What happens next? Because of this business model, CNBC cannot turn on a dime into the Washington Post of financial journalism. They can't afford to. What happens next becomes a poignant question when one considers that NBC affiliates have decided to keep the matter quiet. This whole thing might just blow over.
If that happens, if CNBC continues to bill itself as something other than a financial syncophantic monolith and chooses to ignore its ethical responsibility to educate and inform its viewers, this country will have no tools to correct the excesses that caused this financial clusterfuck and will continue its ignorant sink into fiscal oblivion.