Saturday, March 14, 2009

Stewart-Cramer Interview Analysis

Balkinization has a must read post on The Stewart-Cramer interview and the predicament of journalism.

"The reason we don't see interviews like this on television is first, that interviewees don't sit there and take accusations of this type-- they fight back, spin, obfuscate, or change the subject; and second, that if a contemporary reporter started laying into a subject the way Stewart laid into Cramer, no one would ever agree to an interview with that reporter again. It was a rare combination of circumstances that led Cramer to agree to sit still and listen to Stewart engage in his j'accuse."

There was also a segment on Friday's News Hour, Controversy Continues to Brew Over Media's Role in Financial Meltdown. They spent a bit too much time on the misdirection that yes, Jim Cramer makes mistakes. It of course wasn't about the hazards of stock picking. They did list a number of good articles covering the mistakes of the market that occurred over several years, but another commentator brought up that they were lost in the noise of how to get into this new market. Another said that they started reporting some of the problems, like the housing bubble, too early. So people stopped paying attention and how many times could they continue to write the same story. That's certainly the case with The Economist. But of course, where was the analysis saying that the bubble was being kept artificially alive by bad fed policy?

It ended with: "The thing that people need to realize about journalism is that it's largely telling you what has happened, not what is going to happen. And so the only part of journalism that tells you what is going to happen is investigative journalism. And that's getting savaged right now in a lot of media companies where they're laying people off."


Update: Of course, Glenn Greenwald has stuff to say on this that is worth reading, There's nothing unique about Jim Cramer.

No comments: