What's Been and What's Ben

Jon Stewart holds a special place in my heart. I have been watching The Daily Show and The Colbert Report since high school. It has been a religion for me since at least 2003, six years now, or since we invaded Iraq. For a good chunk of my conscious life I have been watching these men educate, entertain, and engage me in the issues of the day. I transitioned from broadcast over to basic cable; away from Letterman and Conan. Conan doesn’t take over until June 1st, which surprised me. They came along for the ride with my rising interest in politics. I can not imagine what I would be without them.

Stewart recently had on Jim Cramer, the host of Mad Moneyon CNBC. It was one of the best interviews ever on his show. It bumped off all but three minutes of comedy. Stewart was well prepared. Cramer is a reasonable guy and should not have been the face of this. It is only because Cramer defended his network when others did not that he became the focus of the artillery bombardment.

The basic problem Stewart has is this… Business news is not realistic because there are two stock markets in one. The first one has your money for retirement and the other is the domain of Wall Street traders who manipulate the market to make money from no work. Now, from a principle of conservation, the money must come from somewhere. Because of the lack of proper regulation these traders took from the rest of us and accumulated large sums of money that had no meaning. But nobody on the news talks about the real trading that is going on.

I can understand the arguement that these traders help even out the system and provide liquidity. The problem is that hedge funds and other organizations are not faceless investors in a massive sea that unaffected by them but actively changing the market. Overstock.com was almost forced out of business because purposeful manipulation to do short selling drove their stock down to near collapse.

What did Stewart do and why is it important? He brought enough attention to it that people on my level (rather imformed) know about it. A larger influence comes from the media ripple that was sent out. The Thursday interview caused it to be brought up on all the Sunday morning talk shows. People in the media watch Stewart/Colbert because what they do is media criticism. If there was a show about working at a widget plant then widget plant workers would watch a show about that.

What does it mean in a broader sense? We have entered an age where it is now dangerous (and at worse criminal) to believe everything you hear. It was before, but now we can pay attention to the problem. Every news source has a bias that changes. Some reporters are lazy and go to press conferences, rephrase what was said, and then we read it. That is not news, but propaganda dispersion. We have so much news in the digital age, but the quality hasn’t improved with it!

I propose that we pay more attention to the news, find different sources, and remember that all information has a bias.