Lou Dobbs, He Used To Be A Journalist
by sarabeth at 6:00 am on May 8th, 2007 in MediaLou Dobbs has been pretending for a while to be a journalist. It looks he’s just got tired of pretending.
CBS’s Lesley Stahl took him on in a “60 Minutes” interview, and gave him a little bit of what he so richly deserves:
“Well, here’s what they say about you: that you distort the figures, that you exaggerate and that you aim to inflame just to get ratings,” Stahl says.
“Oh, really?” Dobbs replies. “That’s fascinating, because what I can’t understand is why other journalists would not take on the issues of free trade, illegal immigration, outsourcing—all of these rather sexy topics … which I’ve been covering for years.”
“Reporters don’t ‘take on’ issues. Reporters ‘report’ issues, and there’s a big difference there,” Stahl says. “Do you think you’re a journalist?”
“Absolutely,” Dobbs says. “I may be an advocacy journalist, but I’m a journalist.”
One of the issues he tackles relentlessly is illegal immigration. And on that, his critics say, his advocacy can get in the way of the facts.
Following a report on illegal immigrants carrying diseases into the U.S., one of the correspondents on his show, Christine Romans, told Dobbs that there have been 7,000 cases of leprosy in the U.S. in the past three years.
60 Minutes checked that and found a report issued by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, saying that 7,000 is the number of leprosy cases over the last 30 years, not the past three. The report also says that nobody knows how many of those cases involve illegal immigrants.
That certainly seems to fit the charge of “that you distort the figures, that you exaggerate and that you aim to inflame just to get ratings”. Unless it was just an honest mistake? Anyone can make a mistake, after all. Stahl offered Dobbs a piece of rope. Dobbs promptly proceeded to comprehensively hang himself:
“We went to try and check that number, 7,000. We can’t…,” Stahl says.
“Well, I can tell you this. If we reported it, it’s a fact,” Dobbs replies.
“You can’t tell me that. You did report it,” Stahl says.
“I just did,” Dobbs says.
“How can you guarantee that to me?” Stahl asks.
Says Dobbs, “Because I’m the managing editor. And that’s the way we do business. We don’t make up numbers, Lesley.”
One of these days, Dobbs is going to say something about The Bubble that Bush lives in. I guarantee that several people across America will die laughing.
The best part of the 60 minutes interview though has to be:
STAHL: What about fair and balanced?
L. DOBBS: I’ve never, Lesley, found the truth to be fair and balanced. I’ve found it to be…
STAHL: But, that’s — but wait, what’s the definition of journalism? That — that’s in there. That has to be part of what a journalist is, is fair and balanced.
L. DOBBS: I truly believe there’s a non-partisan independent reality…
Just to put this into perspective by stating the obvious: Dobbs has now sunk so low that he thinks it’s perfectly fine for people who are managing editors at CNN to go on national TV and say that they don’t give two hoots for fair and balanced. Or, to be fair to Dobbs, either he thinks it’s fine, or he just doesn’t care any more what he says to whom. He’s too big a star, and he puts up the ratings (which have “nearly doubled in the last two years”). It’s hard to imagine that the network which cheerfully gives a prime-time platform to Glenn Beck cares about anything else. It’s hard to imagine that they would actually fire Lou Dobbs, for making them and himself look ludicrous. And maybe that’s all Dobbs cares about any more.
Bureaucrash - Join the Resistance » Blog Archive » Lou Dobbs, He Used To Be A Journalist on 30 Mar 2009 at 6:19 am
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