In case you missed Jon Stewart’s brilliant interview with CNBC’s Jim Cramer yesterday, I’ve embedded part of the clip above. But I would go to DailyShow.com to see the and even to watch the full unedited interview, because it is a fascinating peek at what journalism sometimes is missing in financial coverage.

In case you’ve missed the news coverage this has gotten (CNN / NYT / WaPost), Stewart took Cramer to task for the fact that he and his network essentially cheered on a bubble built on working class dollars while hedge fund managers and Wall Street insiders cashed in.

If the pundits only focus on how entertaining this was (and it was entertaining), this is a missed opportunity. Stewart’s interview not only exposed the culture of CNBC’s reporting habits, which are filled with conflicts of interest, but also showed how it’s done in an era where expert pundits often are fresh off the payroll of the industry they’re covering. Read more

One of the true joys of living here in Columbia is the annual True/False Film Festival, a four-day event that brings in some great independently made documentary films. It’s a real treat to have in a place like this and draws people from all over, and the 2009 edition has been no exception.

I saw four very good films today, but the one that hit me the most was Burma VJ. Directed by Anders Østergaard, the film is the story of how a bunch of citizen reporters documented the Saffron Revolution in Burma for the outside world back in 2007 (background) using nothing more than digital video cameras and a network of delivery that could get around the oppressive military regime’s measures against dissent.

The film is unique. Rather than using documentary footage shot by Østergaard and his crew, it strings together actual video shot by the VJs (video journalists) during the time of the conflict. It uses the narrative supplied by “Joshua,” who was the leader of the network, talking about how he was responsible for getting their footage out to sources such as CNN and BBC to raise awareness around the world. Read more

The Online News listserv had an interesting post about a site called Breaking Tweets, the brainchild of Craig Kanal, that culls interesting Tweets from Twitter feeds on particular topics and puts a “human face” on things going on in the news.

A good example is the coverage on the site of the Australian brushfires.

Thinkers rightly note that, as with any media that is an aggregate of socially produced content, this ultimately means more noise in the stream of media conversation. Journalists often use this as evidence that this “noise” doesn’t matter and makes it inferior to professional jounalism. Read more