“It says to me that you all know what’s going on…you pretend it’s a once in a lifetime tsunami that nobody saw coming, but that’s disingenuous at best, and criminal at worst,” said a red-faced Jon Stewart to Jim Cramer during their March 12 2009 Daily Show interview. “When I see this I can not tell you how angry it makes me,” Jon Stewart said after airing a clip from a December 22 2006 Jim Cramer interview with Wall Street Confidential. In the 2006 interview, Jim Cramer detailed how to manipulate the market through spreading rumors, and encouraged all hedge fund managers to do it, stating that it was legal because the SEC did not understand it.
The Jon Stewart/Jim Cramer interview attracted 2.3 million viewers making it one of the top ten most watched episodes in the Daily Show’s 10-year history. It was the culmination of a widely covered feud between Jim Cramer and Jon Stewart that was sparked by the Daily Show’s March 4 2009 segment “CNBC Gives Financial Advice”. CNBC anchor Rick Santelli was scheduled to appear on the Daily Show on March 4. It was an appearance Jon Stewart was eager to arrange after Santelli’s February 19 2009 rant about Obama’s housing plan on the trading floor of the CME Group in Chicago, where he asked, “who really wants to subsidize the losers' mortgages?” however, Santelli canceled last minute.
An 8-minute segment on CNBC’s financial reporting was prepared to air before the interview with Rick Santelli, which Jon Stewart dedicated to, “all the dumbass homeowners whose optimism and bad judgment blinded you into accepting money that was offered to you.” The segment pieced together various CNBC news personalities touting the strength of the Lehman Bros, Bear Stearns, AIG, and Merrill Lynch weeks before their collapse. It, also, showed segments of softball interviews with disgraced CEO’s, such as John Thain, and fugitives, such as John Stanford, who was asked by a CNBC reporter, “is it good to be a billionaire?”
Jim Cramer responded to Jon Stewart’s segment in a March 9th article for MainStreet where he claimed that his comment about Bear Stearns was taken out of context. The Daily Show responded that night with the segment, “In Cramer We Trust”, which quoted Cramer encouraging people to buy Bear Stearns stock 7 weeks before their collapse. On his March 12 Daily Show appearance, a visibly uncomfortable Cramer attempted to defend himself, and CNBC by highlighting his efforts to expose short selling, and calling for indictments of financial moguls. However, he was drowned out by an audience that cheered on Jon Stewart’s call for the indictment of CNBC for knowing the realities of the fraudulent business practices that preceded the market’s collapse, but failing to report them.
The Daily Show has long blurred the lines between journalism and comedy. In a poll that asked Americans which journalists they most admired, Jon Stewart ranked No. 4. In 2007, the Pew Center’s Project for Excellence in Journalism launched a yearlong project that compared the news agenda of the Daily Show to traditional news media outlets. Jon Stewart’s recent indictment of CNBC has further propelled the Daily Show into the realm of serious journalism, and media analysis. Through criticism of the omissions in CNBC’s financial reporting, a fake news show has not only raised the bar for ethics in journalism, but reminded journalists of their original purpose: to create an informed citizenry.
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