Expose the charlatans and their lies

It is a sad day when the failure of modern mainstream journalism has become so complete that a professional comedian does a better job than those who claim to practise the great craft of exposing and disseminating the truth.

But Jon Stewart's 'take down' - to use the American vernacular - of the charlatans of the financial markets, most notably their cheerleaders on CNBC like Jim Cramer, is by far and away the best effort by any media figure so far to challenge the people who bear a great deal of responsibility for the awful economic mess we are in.

I'm a bit of a dewy eyed optimist when it comes to journalism. I still retain this quaint belief that if journalists or opinion formers masquerading as journalists - the pundits - get something completely wrong, then something should happen.

They should face some punishment, or comeback. Ideally, the 'market of ideas' would mean that people would say 'Oh, they got that wrong, I'm not reading/watching them anymore'.

But what do we do when the nature of our mediascape means it is owned by a very small number of people with deeply vested interests, who keep these people in their jobs not because they are journalists, but because they are paid mouthpieces.

The examples come from across the spectrum.

As the good boys at The Exile point out, many of the pro-Iraq war writers and talking heads who lied us into that charnel house still have their jobs and many even have the temerity to think they can use the same trick as regards Iran.

Even in the provincial world of Australian Rules Football, Caroline Wilson, chief football writer at The Age who confidently told us the smart money was on North Melbourne being relocated to the Gold Coast in 2007 when no such thing ever happened swans on with seemingly no blowback.

How wrong do these people have to be before they lose their jobs?

Luckily for us - and not so luckily for them - the scale of this financial crisis means that people are no longer willing to put up with more bullshit. People are working out they've been systematically lied to and aren't willing to put up with it any more.

We aren't even 10 per cent into the giant steaming pile of crap that confronts us.

What comes out the other side will be a very different beast from what we have today.