vitamin tonic sold as snake oil
last night on the daily show, i was pleasantly surprised by what i saw. finally a taste of real, actual journalism in american mainstream media, even if it was an easy target like jim cramer and cnbc.
to be honest, a lot has been made of this “feud”, but i thought the show last night was hardly a fight, even though stewart was clearly playing hardball with cramer. i’ve seen a lot of media reports today claiming stewart skewered, eviscerated, killed, etc. but that’s not the point of the interview, is it?
if you haven’t seen the full, unedited interview, the clips are embedded below(clips 2 and 3 below the fold), and you can see what i mean by that. while stewart clearly takes cramer to task for his own statements and actions, he also makes it clear that “this song ain’t about you” and that his real target is CNBC - an entire news organization that has cornered itself into irrelevance by NOT blowing the whistle and NOT seeing the warning signs. what they’ve done is a great disservice to the public, and truly is as stewart says “criminal at worst”.
The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c
Jim Cramer Unedited Interview Pt. 1
Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things w/ Demetri Martin
Political Humor
Jim Cramer
ultimately, it comes down to this: journalism is, or at least should be about finding the truth and exposing it, seeking justice for the good of all - the common people as well as society at large. by its very nature, good journalism is often a david vs. goliath fight, to expose corruption at even the highest levels and not just distribute information and sound bites from CEOs and political figures. while that is almost all that we’ve come to expect from our mainstream news organizations, it’s also what the folks at the daily show have not been doing - they may corner their show into relative obscurity by making easy targets of political figures with their punchlines, but as it is now, the entire crew on that show is also proving themselves unsurpassed at researching and disseminating the truth behind the sound bites, exposing corruption, deception, hypocrisies and omissions. this interview should serve as an example of analytic reporting for those in the media, that truth can be found and brought to light, with or without punchlines.
-h
ps: clips 2 and 3 below… also, notice you won’t find anything about last night’s interview on CNBC’s website
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the post above was cross-posted from http://stephenh.net/aytch/2009/03/13/vitamin-tonic-sold-as-snake-oil/
the dude abides.