I'm surprised the article doesn't make any reference to the Jon Stewart effect. Consider - Stewart is invited as a guest on Crossfire, eviscerates the preening self-absorbed Tucker Carlson by not getting baited into Carlson's traps and simply hitting back with hard edged facts.

A few episodes later Crossfire's credibility eroded, the show is cancelled.

So then we have Jim Cramer go on the Daily Show figuring he'll have an easy time getting away with his bluff and bluster, only to have Stewart eviscerate him again. AGAIN using facts and this time video to support the facts, of how Cramer et. al. have been essentially lying to the American audience.

How were these not relevant episodes? Admittedly The Daily Show has a more limited audience, but the audience profile is one that is more educated, and generates more Buzz. Particularly important is the online availability of Cramers humbling.

During the 2000 election, I posited that The Daily Show was already one of the better sources of news on TV. Now I think that even more strongly

thought the same thing...

One difference is that Cramer wasn't exactly universally taken seriously before the dust up with Jon Stewart, and his show is one hour (two, maybe three with repetition) out of the whole lineup which wouldn't account for the decline of the rest of the broadcast day. Nearly anyone who had ever acted on one of Cramer's reccomendations (present company included) is unlikely to take him seriously a second time; those calling into "Mad Money" are such a vast minority of the total audience that the fact that they're willing to praise him on the air is only indicative of the job performance of the call screener, and there's been a fairly long history of various analysts comparing Cramer's advice to various strategies (including just "buy and hold") using paper portfolios and the result is pretty much unanimously to conclude that Cramer's tips will lead to significant underperformance in nearly any market environment.

During the day, the real pros have chosen Bloomberg over other CNBC for years as it is, and probably are running CNBC on mute if at all just in case of a breaking event. Personally, I've only ever regularly watched Fast Money (looking for commentay and a particular interpretation, not really for tips/ideas) and a few minutes of Worldwide Exchange for international realtime tickers or to check the off-hours trends. I thought Stewart's takedown of Cramer was hilarious as well.

I agree. John Stewart drills into Cramer and lays out how bad he and CNBC has dropped the ball. All Cramer can do it throw up his hands and proclaim "CEOs lie to me. There's nothing I can do." Lame, lame, lame.

Imagine if police said "Sorry Mr. Victim, we can't catch the criminal because bad guys lie to us." They would be the laughing stock of the country and would soon lose their jobs. Cramer gets away with it though then the next day complains that Stewart was too rough and unfair on him. Poor baby! Cramer has lost all credibility and should be fired.

Maybe the cast and crew of CNBC should man-up and start doing some hard-nosed investigating then have the courage to call a spade a spade. How about checking and double checking what the CEOs say and if they lied report it. Who knows, maybe with luck CNBC can uncover the next Bernie Madoff or Enron. Ahhh, but then conservatives love con jobs so long as the rich get richer.

-Doughdee222

"Will conservatives ever tire of being wrong all the time?"

To be fair to CNBC, they rarely if ever claim to be investigative journalists, and even most of that part of their programming seems to be after-the-fact looks into past scandals. There's surely an audience for real investigative journalism and to engage in that might give a boost to CNBC's audience size (although that may well come at the expense of advertisers), but it's not as if the current outlets which pride themselves on their investigative departments were any closer to catching Enron or Madoff until their situations became obvious to everyone.

They may well be presuming that the bulk of their audience (and the entirety of their target audience) are savvy enough to understand that a CEO making a public statement on TV is doing so on behalf of a corporation and has some particular agenda to advance in the process, as well as recognizing the lack of any sort of hard-hitting questions being asked. These spots aren't being presented as man-on-the-street pieces or something other than what they are.

Was ABC news really tough on President Obama in the course of any of their interview specials broadcast live out of the White House? In either case is it really necessary to point out that the whole thing is largely a PR vehicle allowing for the unchallenged delivery of a particular message by a particular individual? It's usually pretty clear when the interview consists of either precoordinated or "softball" questions whether or not it's explicitly stated afterward.

I realize we've dumbed down as a society to the point where some packages labelled "Peanuts" have fine print on the back reading "Warning: Package may contain peanuts", but some people don't consider that to be a great indicator of progress. To think that people seeking business news won't realize that a CEO isn't going to just come out with every bit of embarrasing or bad news the company has to offer, or will present less than the most optomistic spin on whatever data is there strikes me as patronizing at least and condescending overall.

Except that the point that Steward made with Cramer was that it didn't take "investigative journalism" to understand how the numbers were being cooked. That Cramer and his co-hosts KNEW ALL ALONG. They just didn't ask any hard questions and went along to go along.