Jim Cramer: he's just a symptom

-
By now you've at least heard about Thursday's Daily Show, wherein Jon Stewart pulled off his foolscap and grilled former hedge-fund trader turned business entertainer Jim Cramer about CNBC's (and the business news networks in general) failure to rise above mindlessly parroting the lies and half-truths fed them by the folks who brought you our current financial fiasco.

Jon Stewart once again showed his "fake" news show does news better than the "real" news shows: his staff prepped him with a series of clips he rolled anytime his subject protested he was misquoted or hadn't said something. Jim Cramer was left no wiggle room. When was the last time you saw that sort of interview on, say, NBC? It was effective and devastating. By the end, Cramer was contrite and apologetic.

Say what you will, Cramer went knowing he was going to get bitch-slapped. He gets marks for doing it anyway - unlike Rick Santelli, who's done little more than whine after Stewart's takedown.



(The full episode as well as extended interview is available on the Daily Show website.)

Glenn Greenwald at Salon makes the case in "There's nothing unique about Jim Cramer" that this same mindless, unquestioning behavior by the press took place in the buildup to the Iraq War. Reporting was reduced to reading press releases verbatim and playing back unedited video clips supplied by the White House.

A large part of this is because news is now seen by the corporate owners of television outlets as a cheap form of content; something to attract eyeballs to be sold to advertisers. And once beholden to the profits of advertising, journalistic integrity early on becomes a casualty.

Because the last thing you want to do is piss off the advertisers with a story that might embarrass them or their friends.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Contact Fedex Delivery Dept For Your Package....

-
Dear Customer! We have been waiting for you to contact us for your Confirmed Package that is registered with us for shipping to your residential location. We had thought that your sender gave you our contact details. It may interest you to know that a letter is also added to your package. However, we cannot quote its content to you via email for privacy reasons. We understand that the content of your package itself is a Bank Draft worth of $800,000.00 USD, FedEx do not ship money in CASH or in CHEQUES but Bank Drafts are shippable. The package is registered with us for mailing by your colleague, and your colleague explained that he is from the Country but he is here in Nigeria for a three (3)months Surveying Project as he works with a consultant firm in Nigeria West Africa We are sending you this email because your package is been registered on a Special Order. What you have to do now, is to contact our Delivery Department for immediate dispatch of your package to your re...
Read more

Random Thoughts on AI-generated images

-
Image
It's been a while, but I'm back (bitching as usual). Let's start with....Artificial Intelligence generated art! 1. The first thing to remember is this is the new Bright Shiny Object. LIke the camera once was. Upon seeing the first daguerreotype around 1840, the French painter Paul Delaroche (1797-1856), declared: “From today, painting is dead.” He was a little premature. And there will continue to be be more Bright Shiny Objects that will grab everyone’s attention and cause gnashing of teeth and rending of garments. 2. It’s also version .01 of this Bright Shiny Object. What we’re currently seeing is essentially demo reels: “See what I can do!!” Interesting but not *that* interesting. Once the excitement wears off it will be just another tool, used badly by some, used well by others. The camera did not replace painting, but it opened the eyes of artists to the possibilities of other forms. 3. Where Does the Artificial End and the Artist Begin? in my mind this situation is th...
Read more

Cloud on the Cheap

-
These days, The Cloud is all the rage in the computer world. Cloud storage is probably as far as most folks want (or need) to go - think Box.com, Dropbox, OneDrive, Google Drive/Docs...the list goes on. You can collect quite a bit of free off-site storage if you're of a mind to.  These are all examples of  SaaS - Software as a Service . PaaS - Platform as a Service - gives you a specific pre-configured platform to build applications or services. Finally there is Infrastructure as a Service (IaaS), which is virtualized hardware: CPUs, hard drives, networking, firewalls and the like. A little background:  at my day job at Sisyphean Corp, I manage hosting for a couple dozen big websites (I lose count sometimes).When I first took this on, we were on physical hardware. Trouble with this is once you make your decisions about the hardware, you're sort of stuck with it for a while. If you've predicted your needs poorly, or they change, well... I migrated one o...
Read more