Cramer vs. Kramer.. NOT! 3
You know… I didn’t like this as much as everyone told me I would. Stewart monopolized the conversation way too much, at some point pretty much just throwing out platitudes that had nothing to do with Cramer himself. I have to agree that it felt good and was cathartic to see Stewart wail about the things I’ve been thinking but…
I guess what bugs me are all the articles I’ve seen talking about how Stewart demonstrated “great journalism”. I’m sorry, but journalism isn’t talking about mom & apple pie to an audience hungry for both. Journalism is getting the facts and getting answers. It isn’t doing an interview by monopolizing the discussion and hardly giving your subject a place to speak, let alone present a cogent discussion (sure, calling them on the BS should be done, but you have to give them a chance to make their case before you do so). If showing clips from an old interview that had been circulating online for months and getting answers like “I can change” qualifies as top notch journalism, we’re all going to remain screwed well after this economic mess is over.
The market is full of lies, misdirection, and outright deception. If somehow someone walked in to it thinking that it was all daisies and free love, P.T. Barnum and John Bridges have some quotes that apply quite well to them. Enron is not exactly a story so old that no one can remember it. That pointing this out and suggesting that it is a horror is somehow considered high quality journalism… Some would say it speaks to how far journalism has fallen, but I’d argue that it is more a statement about how far our ability to distinguish quality journalism (which is out there, and has been out there in droves on this particular topic) has fallen, and Mad Money is the just desserts for such a crime.
We’re so #@$@!ing desperate for scape goats that we pile on and cheer whenever the next one is thrown in front of us. It very much is a “Kangaroo Court” (I must admit I was kind of flabbergasted that Cramer somehow suggested such courts are a good thing), and so long as we continue to call it “journalism”, we end up distracting from some real truths, including an understanding of the larger forces which drove this problem, as well as understanding our own mistakes.
In other words: treating proceedings like this as journalism (and despite the Daily Show’s protestations that they advertise that they totally are not journalists, clearly people are not getting the point) is no worse than treating Mad Money as journalism, and it leads to the same place: lessons not learned, and more damage being done.
Congratulations America, It Is No Longer Safe To Be Smart In This Country
Boing Boing finally got an interview with the “Boston Airport suicide bomber”. You know, I can almost forgive what happened at the airport (mistakes happen, people are stupid and twitchy, and sometimes this means people’s lives are put at risk for no good reason). What I frankly cannot accept is what happened afterwards. I’m sorry, but I cannot believe an honest and rational person would conclude that Star Simpson did anything worthy of being charged with a crime. Between Star Simpson going to the airport wearing her funky sweater and me speeding in my car, I am the greater threat to people’s safety, and I won’t get charged with a crime even if I’m caught.
Valleywag hasn't gone downhill, News has
I can’t believe anyone in the tech community is still covering the events at JavaOne, but sure enough, we-troll-for-hitsValleyWag was there to capture Neil Young’s appearance yesterday. Now, I remember when Douglas Adams showed up for the Keynote on the last day of the conference, and that made sense. It was the last day of the conference and everyone was fried –if they hadn’t left town already. Douglas, true to form, provided some great entertainment and geek cred to start off the last day push. But Neil Young is to Java as the Smurfs are to the Iraq War. Could Sun make a more profound statement about how JavaOne jumped the shark long ago than to have an aging rocker whose seminal moments occurred before Java was ever invented keynote on the second day of the event? Best quote from the whole experience goes to Dan Farber’s blog entry, where after carefully promoting BluRay, Java, the PS3, and most importantly his Archive project, we read: “…As an artist I try to remove myself from the business,” Young said. “I steer myself away from that…”.
The previous article captures how Mark Kirk has skillfully managed to create controversy in order to get media attention during an election year. “Online porn” doesn’t quite drag voters attention away from all the other election year theatrics, and “online child predator” is so yesterday’s news, but “rape rooms” is a sure fire hit. Is there any trick from Hussein’s regime that politicians won’t copy and/or trivialize?
Was That George and Charlie, or Was That Barbara Wawa?
What can I say that Michael Grunwald hasn’t said? I think the silver lining on all this is that someone may lose their job, or at least their journalistic credibility over this. Sad yes, but perhaps that’ll start to shift where this boat is heading (and let’s face it, the American public has had a huge hand in steering it that way). Maybe, just for once, we’ll take our responsibilities seriously.
Two Articles, Same Story.... or Not
For those of you trapped in the US media bubble, I thought you might find it interesting to compare two articles, written on the same exact story. One from the AP, found in buried so deeply in the New York Times’s national section that I only found it by searching for “Haynes”. Meanwhile, the Ottawa Citizen, which tends to be more focused on local news, had this take on the story. In case you are thinking that some of the allegations of Haynes wanting convictions in all cases were too unfounded to end up in print in the US, it did make it in to even a short two paragraph story in the Jurist, not to mention the original source article from The Nation(who by the way were all too proud to trumpet getting their man.
Oh, and in case you were wondering, the Aussie’s are focused on an entirely different aspect of the story, although they still have yet to wake up to Haynes’ resignation.
The Glory of the Daily Show Archive
You know the greatest thing about the Daily Show Archive? It means I can embed stuff like this to demonstrate just how far off the deep end cable news is:
and know that I’m helping to promote the show and I’m not going to get a DMCA cease and desist letter.
Evaluating the Press' Contribution to the Jena 6 3
A rather scathing write up on the whole Jena 6 fiasco. I’ve honestly reached the point that I feel I can no longer pay attention to these stories until the hubub has died down (well, at least for the 24-hour news channels to stop covering it). Sure enough, the bits that were shoved in to my ears appear to have little relation with reality. Has the Fourth Estate completely fallen apart or what (and for those of you who have been living in the US longer than me… is their an American equivalent to the fifth estate that one can turn to for quality reporting?).
Marc Cuban Talks Smack to the Factor
I seem to be in the mood for short blog articles today (perhaps I’m getting tired of the sound of my own voice). Anyway, I’m not a huge Mark Cuban fanboy, but I thoroughly enjoyed watching him give the smack down to the folks at Fox News.