The world–that is, the world of media, blogs, and the Internet–was buzzing on Friday morning about Jon Stewart’s take-down of Jim “Mad Money” Cramer the evening before. The smack-down speaks for itself. But toward the end, Stewart made a point that applies to all media, not just the wildcats of cable finance shows.
Cramer was acknowledging that CNBC had aired oodles of interviews during which corporate execs had not told the truth. He insisted that he had been tough on Bush administration Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson and Fed chairman Ben Bernanke. Referring to Paulson, he said,
I’ve called him a liar…Should we all call them liars? I’m a commentator….It’s difficult to have a reporter say I just came from an interview with Hank Paulson and he lied his darn fool head off. It’s difficult. I think it challenges the boundaries.
But Stewart was all for pushing such conventional media boundaries:
I am under the assumption–and maybe this is purely ridiculous–but I’m under the assumption that that we don’t just take their word at face value, that you actually then go around and try to figure it out.
Meaning figure out if they are telling the truth or not–and, if they are not, you do call them liars.
What’s my interest in this slice of the titanic Cramer v. Stewart battle? Well, I once wrote a book immoderately titled, The Lies of George W. Bush. More recently, I wrote a piece noting that the MSM was far too hesitant after 9/11 to call Bush out on his falsehoods–particular on the misrepresentations (or, lies) that greased the way to the Iraq war. That article noted that some MSMers still recoil from the task of branding a politician or government official a truth-teller or liar. Though Stewart concluded this exchange by quipping that he would prefer to be making fart-noise jokes than to be policing financial news networks, it was heartening to see him advance this simple point: if the media doesn’t assail leaders (financial or political) who lie, then those leaders can get away with almost anything.
