TVSquad

I haven't followed this too closely because I think Stewart can push a lot of things too far, but that doesn't change the fact that Zucker is a douchebag.

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It may be true that they couldn't have played hardball the way Stewart implies, but that doesn't exonerate the network from the criticism. The main problem is that all along they've claimed to be experts who were watching out for their viewers, and now that they've been shown to be charlatans, they're response is, "hey, we're just entertainers!"

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CNBC and most of the other business networks aren't reporting news they are reading press releases from the companies they are supposed to be reporting on. If they take everything the CEOs say and don't question it or check it from other sources they are of no use what so ever.

Stewart crushed Cramer in the interview and you could tell that Stewart was a little shocked that Cramer didn't fight back but also agreed with him on many points.

Freedom of the press is a right in this country because the founding fathers understood that there needed to be an outside third party to make the republic work. CNBC in this case and most if not all of the current news media isn't fullfilling this duty today.

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Even the CNBC talking heads refer to their individual programming as a "show". To me this means they think they are in the entertainment business NOT in had hitting news business. This is the basic premise of Stewart's attack. Don't masquerade as a "news" program if you are really "entertainment. In return Stewart always refers to his program as entertainment and NOT news.

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I used to work for NBCU corporate and left last year because of Zucker's horrible management (and Corporate GE for that matter - seen that stock lately?) and this is another one of those times. A good leader wouldn't flinch at Stewart and would instead already have a plan in place to make CNBC a better network, instead, as usual, Zucker relies on after-the-fact bitching since yet another network of his is on the Sh*t list.

Maybe he should come out with another new-yet-phonetically-similar rebranding ... cough syfy cough.... to shake off all this troubles - SeeEnBeeSea anyone?

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How about taking on the fricking government that caused all this? Stewart has no balls for that. He's too busy sucking up to Barry, Dodd and Frank to say word one. Despite all the resulting business transgressions, this was started by Barney Frank and Chris Dodd forcing banks to offer loans to people who did not qualify. Then the derivatives came about to stop the losses and boom! Down goes the economy when someone realizes that teh loans at the heart of it all were BS. Brilliant government interference.

So how about it Stewart? Too busy kissing Barney's a$$ to ask a real question.

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CNBC does investigative reporting? Ha. No, it doesn't.
Very few networks and others really do. They just allow these shorters and others manipulate the market.

Here I'll give you an example:

http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/siliconalley/big-tech/layoffs_coming_to_myspace_2009_3.html

Oh, uh-huh, now who's Rich Greenfield, you say?

He's an analyst for Pali Research.

And what is Pali Research?

Well, it's a subsidiary of Pali Capital-Pali International. According to their website, Pali does:

* Equity Trading
* Equity Research
* Global Derivatives
* Fixed Income
* Structured Products
* Investment Banking

Now, I'm not saying Pali has some personal reasons for speaking negatively about MySpace, because I can't. I'm not a business reporter. I don't have the time or the tools to investigate and understand these people. CNBC does. So do the other business networks. Why don't they use them? Instead of just letting the predictions go unchecked.


I don't Jon Stewart's report was directed squarely at CNBC, Santelli, or Cramer. I think it was directed at ever business network, newspaper, blog, magazine, town crier....that knows Wall Street well and can give a better analysis than "This is how you can make some fast money!", "Buy!!!", "Sell!!!, "Sound Effect!!!"

Jon's right. It's not a game, and they shouldn't try making it such. Many, many jobs and livelihoods depend on the market, and no news network should make light of that.

In his own words in that 2006 interview (which you can totally get here, http://antisocialmedia.net/?page_id=61, because they totally scrubbed it from youtube,) Cramer said "you can't foment...you can't create an impression that a stock is down, but you do it anyway because the FCC doesn't understand it" and that he use to do it himself when he was shorting. Instead of the bells and whistles, he could have been pointing out this. He even said that CNBC was an important part of getting this "message" across, but he didn't help us understand that on his show. Instead, he and so many others lied and hurt us instead.

Anyway, to say CNBC does investigative reporting is quite laughable, which is why a satirist, like Stewart, had deconstruct it. Sorry, this is so long. I probably just should have written an article too. :)

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Brad, your criticism is somewhat invalidated by the fact that CNBC doesn't actually do any investigative reporting. As for hard-hitting stuff causing people to lose access.... Part of being a journalist is having the skill to get people to talk to you. If you can't be hard hitting and get access then you should get the hell out of the industry.

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Also, its the job of the jester to make this kind of attack. From totalitarian monarchies to small Indian tribes, Jon Stewart's exist in many societies.

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All news organizations learn to property straddle the line, and ore often than not the people, agencies and companies they cover learn to respect those organizations for being tough but fair. I know that conventional wisdom states that you need to grovel for access, but the choice between being obsequious and gaining access or being tough and losing it has time and again been demonstrated as a false choice. There is another way.

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What good is access if you don't use it for anything worthwhile?

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CNBC gets scooped by bloggers and other amateurs every day, and these folks have ZERO access compared to CNBC.

They aren't afraid of losing access to information, they are afraid of losing access to ad revenue.

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"The Daily Show doesn't actually investigate news" . Apparently, neither does CNBC.

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