As Stewart points out a number of times in his interview with Cramer, his beef isn’t really with Cramer personally, instead it’s with the CNBC network as a whole, which purports to be a respectable financial journalism network, yet appears to have failed in the journalism department with their coverage of the financial crisis. Instead, Stewart argues in this initial evisceration of the network, the reporters and analysts appear to be more interested in cozy relationships with CEOs than the true health of those CEOs’ businesses. These reporters and analysts have internalized the concerns of the institutions and individuals that they cover, and as a result are no longer providing the public with objective facts about what is happening, particularly with regards to the financial crisis. This internalization is clearly media capture.

When Stewart sends his voice into the upper registers in a parody of Maria Bartiromo’s surprise that CEOs are telling her that their companies are ‘doing OK,’ or his explitive response to one reporter asking Stanford (of Ponzi-scheme fame) ‘what if feels like to be a billionaire,’ you’re given humorous but truthful outrage that CNBC reporters were willing to take CEO statements and face value, and the inability or unwillingness to investigate such statements further.

CNBC may claim that ‘access’ is the key to their success, but Stewart proved that the network is nothing more than captured media. And he did it with only a TiVo and a sense of humor.