“Therefore, since brevity is the soul of wit, and tediousness the limbs and outward flourishes [such as my favorite topic of ideological diversity in the workplace], I shall be brief.”

jpool’s comment was excellent. A wise investor once told me that if you read it in the WSJ or see it on TV, you’re already too late. Brokers make their clients money by not telling others what they do. The “big lie” he describes is the truth.

There is line between entertainment and actual “advice.” Cramer provides entertainment. If he had such great advice, he’d make more money for himself by making money for clients than by being a comedian on TV.

As to his methodology, Cramer could heed the advice of a wise old reporter who once said to a cub reporter, “If your mother tells you she loves you, check it out!”

And finally, Mr. Zimmerman, I appreciated your thoughtful reply to my off topic comments. “Sooner or later” we’ll revisit that issue.

One way or another, it’s hard to see how a serious person would have put Cramer on the air in a way that gave the impression he was dispensing sound information. Not to take anything away from what Stewart has done–it’s been a helluva coup, and hilarious too–but the people who should really be in the Daily Show hot seat are the CNBC execs, and perhaps some of the journalists who should have know better. (On HuffPo, Daniel Sinker hones in on Stewart chiding Cramer: “This song ain’t about you.’”).

And, while we are discussing the media, I would submit that such ideological diversity benefits the academy, government and business equally. (One Spook)

These arguments for intellectual or ideological diversity have some merit, I think, but at the same time they almost always seem to boil down to the idea that “things would be better if there were more people like me in the media/academia” (and business? I’d love to see the mealy-mouthed Manhattan Institute mount a campaign for more ideological diversity in America’s business executives).

It would help if the arguments weren’t made so much on the basis of spectacularity, if the scandalous and highly politicized prime examples of bias were put into perspective, because they aren’t identical with “the news.” It would also help if the arguments came with concrete examples of the real-world benefits of ideological balance, ideally in the form of an organization with a track record of getting it right that can be plausibly tied to its diversity.

Picking up on jpool’s point, it seems that if you want to cast the problems that Stewart went after as ideological what was needed at CNBC was more skepticism about the magic of the unfettered, unregulated free market.

As I was poking around in the threads of this story, I came across a different angle. It paints Cramer as a especially flamboyant but otherwise typical member of the financial press–in the pocket of corrupt traders and organized crime. The whole thing is spelled out on a site called Deep Capture. I’m wondering if anyone has some background or perspective on the claims being made there. Reading the story (this one) is very much a down-the-rabbit-hole experience–I haven’t had one like it since I read Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, many years ago (that’s the story of how Jesus wasn’t crucified but instead went to the south of France to drink red wine and hang with Van Gogh found the Templar dynasty. It was in the news a few years ago because the authors claimed that The Da Vinci Code violated their copyright).

What was interesting about this roundtable was not that Carlson managed (again) to demonstrate why he no longer has his own show. It’s that the approach Kurtz and his panel used to dissect the Cramer-Stewart imbroglio duplicated some of the very “journalistic” approaches Stewart has repeatedly critiqued on his show–among them, a failure to question or at least explore basic assertions of fact.

Kurtz and his guest spent a fair amount of time discussing how well Cramer “did” in his interview with Stewart. Kurtz also mentioned as significant, but never pursued, a fundamental charge Stewart leveled against CNBC — that CNBC reporters like Cramer know that investing is rigged against small investors and is rife with manipulation but ignore these issues in their “reporting.” The conversation moved on with this question unexplored.

This roundtable encapsulates what’s wrong with even television journalism that aspires to be high-minded and self-reflexive. I happen to like some of Kurtz’s writing for the Washington Post, but as a television host he, like so many others, seems reluctant to force participants to answer or explore the most on point questions. In this instance, as Kurtz himself asknowledged, Stewart had made some fairly incendiary assertions. The most obvious question should be –well, are they true, or is there evidence to think this is true? Were others reporting about these issues that CNBC should have at least acknowledged in its coverage?

Instead, Tucker Carlson gets away with sidestepping the question –as so many pundits get to do. Carlson doesn’t even try to rebut Stewart, he just goes for the obvious ad hominem attack: Stewart is an egomaniac and a hack for the Democratic party. Oh, well if that is the case, then let’s not listen to a single thing he has to say, right? One irony here is that Kurtz actually played an old clip of Stewart tangling with Tucker and telling him that he “should go to journalism school.” Based on the use of the the ad hominem substituted for analysis of truth content, it seems maybe Tucker hasn’t completed his night school courses.

I am sure there are those who will counter that if you actually expect your guests to stay on point, be knowlegeable about a subject, and assess truth claims, you will quickly run out of guests. Maybe, but again Jon Stewart shows us that other models are possible. I would point to Stewart’s lengthy debate/interview with Douglas Feith, who was pimping his new book, as an example of not letting guests just make assertion that go unchallenged.

The right did not create “its own alternative journalism,” Ralph, the market responded to the mainstream media’s purposeful, ideological-driven exclusion of views that are shared by a good half of our population. If you do not believe that, witness the colossal failure in the marketplace of the left’s Air America. It has failed because it has not provided, in Tim’s words, “public information or countervailing data to push back” on the information already provided by most of the media today. The market typically does not accept more supply of what it already has.

And gentlemen, we agree that there exists “flawed journalism” on the left and the right. I apologized for not including such instances on the right; for example I could have cited the ridiculous non-controversy of our president’s birth certificate as an example. But, I would ask that you send me your link to the Washington Post conservative edition, Tim; I don’t have that one.

I honestly cannot accept characterizing ideology in journalism as a “tedious, trite refrain.” That’s tantamount to dismissing personality as a factor in interpersonal relationships. But, I’ll accept that methodology is the problem, albeit, driven in a large part by ideology.

The methodology of pimping for sources and not caring that they pimp for sources has been the cornerstone of The New York Times for most of the 20th Century. Indeed, its access has been the envy of the entire journalism profession. The pimps at Fox news drive rusty old Ford Pintos compared to the gold standard Cadillac pimp mobiles of their New York Times counterparts.

But, the Bush administration cut off the White House access of the Times’ pimps and for that he paid dearly. His reelection in 2004 had to be the darkest hour for the Times, perhaps surpassed only by its stock being worth less than its Sunday edition and having to borrow 250 million dollars at loan shark interest rates from a Mexican capitalist who owns a personal monopoly on the telephone system in Mexico. The very irony of that transaction should be in the Guinness’s’ Book of world Records.

And, while I was not either surprised or disappointed by the outcome of the 2008 election, mainstream media ideological bias reached an all-time high. Even CNBC was compelled to “reassign” its two election anchors after their pathetic fawning at the Democratic convention, and the 11th hour attack piece in the Times on Mrs. McCain disturbed even my most ardent liberal friends.

To use your words, Tim, I’m suggesting here that “the willingness to dig harder for the complex truths in the world around us” is best facilitated by an organization that is ideologically diverse; not “being more ideological,” but being more ideologically diverse.

And, while we are discussing the media, I would submit that such ideological diversity benefits the academy, government and business equally.

Honestly, I have a very difficult time understanding why seemingly intelligent, well-educated, respected and thoughtful people with whom I come in contact with embrace diversity in race, class, and gender, and any other protected class you want to name, yet these same people apparently see no benefit whatsoever in diversity based on ideology.

Why is that?

Why is it that a history department at the University of Iowa that has 42 professors, non of whom are registered Republicans, considered acceptable when if that same department had no women (it actually has very few), no racial minorities, and no registered Democrats, then all manner of “diversity outrage” in the form of lawsuits, fines, boycotts, etc. would break lose?

What type of “methodology” is in place when that same department of history would not even grant a personal job interview to an outstanding young scholar, whose apparent views many might consider “conservative,” when he had better credentials, qualifications, and far greater achievement than other applicants who were interviewed?

Forgive me … I have a lot of questions. (Or is that “alot,” Ralph?)

The problem isn’t ideology: that’s the tedious, trite refrain. The problem is methodology. Indeed, some avowedly conservative mass media like Fox News only get away from the problem of pimping for sources by not caring that they pimp for sources: at Fox, that’s a proud feature of their style.

If what you’re looking for is the willingness to dig harder for the complex truths in the world around us, you’re not going to get it by being more ideological.