CNBC is itself a business, after all.
I was listening to an interesting pod cast on just this subject (http://www.dancarlin.com/disp.php/csarchive) if anyone is interested for a unique perspective on this.
*edit: grammar fixes
If their viewers actually wanted thoughtful news, the agency that provided it would profit.
Since viewers want sound effects, action, drama, and easily digestible black-and-white polemic pieces, that is what the agencies provide, and they profit.
CNBC knows that if they show just serious journalism, not a lot of people are going to see them, and at the end of the day, it's all a business !
I am not sure what the ideal ownership is now. But CNBC is mostly owned by G.E. whose main interest in this property is making money. The desire to maximizing profits is in partial conflict with strong news reporting.
The burden does also reside on the consumers who demand more entertainment then real information.
So basically the banks had a financial incentive to make extremely risky investments.
But still, Cramer and other journalists failed. By the time Cramer said that AIG was safe, I thought it should have been obvious that the banks had invested a lot of money in some extremely risky assets. In June that year Bear Stearns said it was spending over 3 billion to bail out one of its funds. So instead of Cramer deciding that he did not have enough enough information to evaluate AIG, and saying that, he basically decided that he had enough info to say that AIG was safe. That probably convinced a lot of people to keep their money in AIG stock.
The New York Times doesn't have subpoena power, but there are still a non-zero number of people in power who limit their shenanigans because they're terrified of ending up on the front page.
The government has a regulatory and investigative role, but it can't go out on a hunch or a rumor, a good journalist can (Which is not to say we need witch hunts).
One good journalistic organization can help keep a whole industry honest just by the threat of really investigating things that don't add up. WSJ is good at reporting, but I can't recall the last time they cracked a scandal in the financial world. Feel free to correct me.
Would a diligent, news-y CNBC have prevented the financial crisis? I doubt it. But perhaps they could've prevented or exposed some of the most ridiculous excess. It seems every person 'in the know' I've read has said that in hindsight they thought that Madoff was on the take, they just assumed he was an insider trader.
Would this stuff sell in comparison to Jim Cramer throwing pies? I don't know. But I have a hunch that a financial dateline style report exposing Madoff as a scam would've garnered a few viewers...