In the News Cramer v. Stewart

March 16, 2009

Thinking about their showdown last Thursday, we took a look at a 12-year-old video clip we have: It shows Jim Cramer, a then-hot-shot hedge fund manager, going full bore as the market's cheerleader and entertainer. A TV show of his own was clearly in his future. (The clip's from our Jan. '97 report Betting on the Market, Joe Nocera, correspondent.)

Really, who turns to a TV show like Cramer's for advice on buying and selling stocks? How many average investors are out there who would, or did? We wonder. There's the young family who bought into CNBC's stock reporting - as we show in our clip. But that was 12 years ago during the run-up to the Internet bubble. Wonder whether that family was taking stock tips from CNBC after that bubble burst? Jon Stewart fumed about Cramer's always-upbeat advice on Wall Street. As the whipping boy, however, was Cramer too easy a target?

The other clip here is from an interview with CNBC Anchor David Faber. It's taken from our "Inside the Meltdown" reporting. While not addressing Cramer's show in particular, Faber does offer his sum-up of how CNBC, the popular business news channel, fared in reporting on the looming credit crisis.