‘The Daily Show’ on Wall Street

“It’s a shake-down, witch-hunt, scalping jihad,” said Jon Stewart of ‘The Daily Show,’ mocking financial television’s coverage of the $13 billion JPMorgan Chase settlement.

Wednesday’s night’s episode featured a clip of Salon reporter Alex Pareene questioning whether Jamie Dimon should lose his job as the chief executive of the bank.

“I think a lot of their earnings and revenue we’ve seen have come from really shady dealings,” said Mr. Pareene appearing on CNBC. “I think then.”

“Oh, come on,” Maria Bartiromo said.

“It’s a fact. It’s in the news. Everyone knows about it,” Mr. Pareene replied.

“What’s a fact? What’s a fact?” the CNBC anchor asked.

“The fact that they hired the children of prominent party officials,” Mr. Pareene said. “And there’s this spreadsheet on which it’s connected to deals they were trying to do in China.”

“I don’t like spewing things that are not actual fact on this program,” Ms. Bartiromo said.

“Anyone can just Google China and JPMorgan,” the Salon reporter said. “It was in The New York Times.”

“Oh, The New York Times,” said Ms. Bartiromo, waving her hands in the air. “Oh, okay.”

“Oh, The New York Times,” responded Mr. Stewart in mock exaggeration. “The paper of record for crackheads and liars. Just out of curiosity, financial journalist seem to feel that The New York Times reporting is beneath their veracity standards. Is there a news source that you feel is fact-filled and trustworthy enough to quote on your hallowed CNBC air?”

News clips aired of Ms. Bartiromo and other colleagues praising a Wall Street Journal editorial that compared the settlement to medieval justice. “You’ve got to work for the editorial board to get this,” Joe Kernan told Becky Quick. “You might as well work at The New York Times.”

“See,” Mr. Stewart said. “Basically the only place that these financial guys consider factual enough for rebroadcast is the one part of the Rupert Murdoch bias machine explicitly labeled opinion.”