This morning on dKos, I'm a little surprised to find that there's nary a diary on this article by Glenn Greenwald (if I missed it, let me know).
So here's one singing it's praises. He makes a simple point and makes it well-- Jim Cramer is a poster boy not just for the corruption of business reporting, but the mass media in general. Case in point: Iraq.
You should go read the article now, because you know all I'm doing on the flip is quoting my favorite parts.
I forget about Greenwald sometimes, I think solely because of the (now defunct?) Salon nag screen, and it's a shame because he's routinely brilliant.
In the "There's nothing unusual about Cramer" piece, he makes the point that Cramer's defense for providing a forum/echo chamber for CEOs to say whatever they want is that the "CEO's lie to me". Cramer is powerless, he says, unable to exercise any form of critical judgment for his viewers benefit. Greenwald cites Tim Russert on Bill Moyers documentary about the run up to the Iraq War giving essentially the same, pathetic excuse.
Cheney's ruse, which was painfully transparent even to me at the time, was to leak an "intelligence" report to the NYT, then go on TV and cite it as independent research, if he hadn't spent the morning writing it himself. The key section of the Moyers-Russert talk is here:
BILL MOYERS: Was it just a coincidence in your mind that Cheney came on your show and others went on the other Sunday shows, the very morning that that story appeared?
TIM RUSSERT: I don't know. The NEW YORK TIMES is a better judge of that than I am.
BILL MOYERS: No one tipped you that it was going to happen?
TIM RUSSERT: No, no. I mean-
BILL MOYERS: The Cheney office didn't leak to you that there's gonna be a big story?
TIM RUSSERT: No. No. I mean, I don't have the-- This is, you know-- on MEET THE PRESS, people come on and there are no ground rules. We can ask any question we want. I did not know about the aluminum tubes story until I read it in the NEW YORK TIMES.
BILL MOYERS: Critics point to September Eight, 2002 and to your show in particular, as the classic case of how the press and the government became inseparable. Someone in the Administration plants a dramatic story in the NEW YORK TIMES. And then the Vice President comes on your show and points to the NEW YORK TIMES. It's a circular, self-confirming leak.
TIM RUSSERT: I don't know how Judith Miller and Michael Gordon reported that story, who their sources were. It was a front-page story of the NEW YORK TIMES. When Secretary Rice and Vice President Cheney and others came up that Sunday morning on all the Sunday shows, they did exactly that.
My concern was, is that there were concerns expressed by other government officials. And to this day, I wish my phone had rung, or I had access to them.
Russert's ingrained passivity is painful. "The NEW YORK TIMES is a better judge of that than I am." "I wish my phone had rung." I WISH MY PHONE HAD RUNG! It reminded me of Colbert's description of the job of the WH press corp:
But, listen, let's review the rules. Here's how it works. The president makes decisions; he's the decider. The press secretary announces those decisions, and you people of the press type those decisions down. Make, announce, type. Put them through a spell check and go home. Get to know your family again. Make love to your wife. Write that novel you got kicking around in your head. You know, the one about the intrepid Washington reporter with the courage to stand up to the administration. You know -- fiction.
Most distubingly, Greenwald ends the article with quotations from various media luminaries (David Gregory, Charlie Gibson, Brian Williams, David Ignatius) defending the media-as-mouthpiece theory of journalism. Cramer, he points out, is not the exception, he's the norm.
PS UPDATE: For another, better written take on Greenwald's piece that gives a big middle finger salute to Chris Matthews, check out Paul Rosenbergs's piece at Open Left.