Last week, New York Times columnist David Leonhardt wrote of Lou Dobbs’ tenuous relationship with the truth – “a somewhat flexible relationship with reality”– and his refusal to own up to an erroneous, fear-inducing report in violation of a basic journalistic creed.
It seems Dobbs wants to stick to a completely false assertion – first aired on his CNN program in 2005 and repeated again this May – that “there had been 7,000 cases of leprosy in this country over the previous three years, far more than in the past.” Dobbs attributed this increase to “unscreened illegal immigrants.”
Leonhardt reported that there have indeed been approximately 7,000 diagnosed cases – but not over the past three years as Dobbs would have viewers believe. Rather, these incidents occurred over a thirty-year period and have “dropped steadily” since a peak of 456 cases in 1983. “Mr. Dobbs was flat-out wrong,” Leonhardt writes. But facts be damned, Dobbs is sticking by his numbers (”If we reported it, it’s a fact,” Dobbs said.)
The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) – a civil rights organization that fights discrimination and monitors hate groups – ran an ad in the New York Times and USA Today calling for CNN to issue a correction on Dobbs’ show. In its Open Letter to CNN the SPLC wrote: “The source for Dobbs’ leprosy claim is the late Madeleine Cosman – an anti-immigration zealot who once publicly stated that ‘most’ Latino immigrant men ‘molest girls under 12, although some specialize in boys, and some in nuns’….Given that Mr. Dobbs refuses to retract his leprosy claim, we believe it is CNN’s responsibility to do so. We suggest that the appropriate place for the correction is the same place where the falsehood was told: on Mr. Dobbs’ show.”
In response to Leonhardt’s article – which Dobbs called a “personal scurrilous attack” – Dobbs said he wouldn’t have used Cosman if he had known of her background. But last year, Daphne Eviatar reported in The Nation, “Dobbs often features and quotes activists with links to extremist and even openly racist groups…. Yet Dobbs consistently fails to mention those connections.” Also, in “vilifying immigrants,” Dobbs “searches high and low for statistics showing the negative impact of immigration on the US economy, and he conveniently leaves out contradictory information.”
This pattern of ignoring the facts and engaging in inflammatory rhetoric not only poisons an important national debate on immigration – as SPLC President Richard Cohen said in a recent web chat– it also places Dobbs in what Eviatar described as “a long line of illustrious, and notorious, Americans who have played pivotal roles in the nation’s periodic outbreaks of nativism….”
Leonhardt wrote, “The most common complaint about [Dobbs], at least from other journalists, is that his program combines factual reporting with editorializing.” But that’s not the real problem, in my view. I have no problem with the mix of factual reporting and editorializing, interpretive journalism married to factual accuracy. (In fact, I think Dobbs has done a good job in this regard when it comes to issues like outsourcing, the minimum wage, and corporate welfare.) We do that every week in The Nation – along with investigative reporting, editorials, review essays, etc. And unlike CNN, which claims to be politically “neutral,” we are politically engaged and open about our politics and values. We are also assiduous in our fact-checking – always believing that accuracy is a duty, not a luxury or simply a virtue. And we publish clarifications and corrections as needed.
But there are no signs that CNN is doing anything to set the record straight or address Dobbs’ relationship to factual accuracy. Even CBS – which initially caught what Frank Rich described as “Lou Dobbs’s hoax blaming immigrants for a nonexistent rise in leprosy”– has now hired him as a commentator for The Early Show. How far will Dobbs go in pushing his fact-challenged immigration agenda on this new outlet? And if he truly wants to serve his viewers by reporting on what he calls a “nonpartisan independent reality” then isn’t it time he stop pulling the wool over folks’ eyes?
Katrina Vanden Heuvel is editor of The Nation.
© 2007 The Nation
Close the borders, issue national ID cards, direct lives to march to the beat of fear and terror. Is this a free country, or what? (LOL)
Lou Dobbs is the poster boy for cartoonist Derf’s “White Middle Class Suburban Man”. If he hadn’t existed, he would have had to be invented–in fact isn’t that what he did several years ago when the business beat got too boring for him?
Yeah, illegal immigrants giving us leprosy and raping our underage nuns while doing the jobs “Americans won’t do” is the most important issue facing our country right about now. In my local paper today was a letter from a 28%-er, a hard-core Bush supporter who whines that his party has gone on the wrong track because Bush is advocating immigration “amnesty”. The joke’s on the Repug base because cheap labor, immigrant or otherwise, is a neccessary “commodity” for the corporations running our government and pulling the strings of “our” representatives, including The Decider. It would be irony indeed if this immigration argument is the straw that breaks the elephant’s back.
Dobbs is a rabble-rousing jackass. Supposedly a champion of the middle class, he offers the fascist approach of blaming those lower on the economic scale for your problems. If he wanted to ask some real questions he’d find out why, since US companies are required to obtain proof of their employees’ citizenship or work visas, so many illegal aliens find jobs here.
if the 12- million or so ‘illegal’ aliens were coming, or had come from quebec [humor me, i know there arent THAT many people up there] i guaran-tee you we wouldnt be having this debate. of course, with our recent aversion to the French, perhaps there would have been some uproar. but, this entire debate is being driven by the fact that so many illegals, etc. are latino. case closed.
The 7,000 cases figure appears likely to be a lower bound.
From Sharon Lerner at the New York Times:
“While there were some 900 recorded cases in the United States 40 years ago, today more than 7,000 people have leprosy, or Hansen’s disease, as it is now called. ”And those are the ones we know about,” said Dr. William Levis, attending physician at Bellevue Hospital’s Hansen’s Disease Clinic. ”There are probably many, many more.””
Further in that article:
“Most of those infected in this country are immigrants from global leprosy hot spots, like Brazil, India and the Caribbean.
But, in the past six years, Dr. Levis and his colleagues have proved that a handful of his patients — including a 73-year-old man from Queens who had never been out of the country and an elderly Jewish man from Westchester — have contracted leprosy here.”
dobbs must have FOX disease…which everyone knows gives those infected an aversion to the truth
I doubt CNN put Dobbs on the air with his message until they didn’t think they could avoid doing so without loosing credibility. Is Dobbs’ overall journalistic credibility different than the comparable media? Sadly, US media is in very bad state.
Sadly, Katrina Vanden Heuvel’s essay is politically biased reporting using a dubious source.
The SPLC is little more a “Civil Rights Organization” the the Bakker’s PTL was a legitimate religious organization. Both of these dubious organizations greatly overspent on fund raising and executive salaries/perks.
The issue of human migration and infectious diseases is an important, politically charged issue. Is it really possible for conventional academic institutions to really look at this accurately? If not what are the costs/risks involved?
Journalists should be to try to create an environment in which hard-nosed accuracy on these issues is fostered and encouraged, and the overall quality of journalism is increased. Vanden Huevel must also take it upon herself to identify fringe sources she uses-particularly in dealing with an issue in which wealthy interests are so heavily involved as immigration. It is relatively easy to find “legitimate” sources that cheer lead for the wealthy-and those that do not may have issues from sheer lack of resources. We must learn look at what the truth would be like without this bias-in an environment in which hard facts are hard to come by.
Dobbs, Limbaugh, Hannity, Medved, O’Reilly … they’re all the same … they will only find information (whether it is credible or not) that backs their view of the world.
Randall Burns: The mangled grammar of your posts makes it difficult to understand what you mean to say, or the real intent of your comments.
“The 7,000 cases figure appears likely to be a lower bound.”?
“I doubt CNN put Dobbs on the air with his message until they didn’t think they could avoid doing so without loosing credibility.”?
“The SPLC is little more a “Civil Rights Organization” the the Bakker’s PTL was a legitimate religious organization.”?
“It is relatively easy to find “legitimate” sources that cheer lead for the wealthy-and those that do not may have issues from sheer lack of resources.”?
Even if one can eke out what you mean to say, I find it difficult to understand why you would lump the country’s premier anti-Ku Klux Klan organization (are these the “fringe sources” you mention?) in with faux Christians like Bakker. I agree that many liberal groups follow the bad corporate example with regard to executive compensation, but your criticism seems misplaced because by bashing the SPLC, you seem to be defending the KKK view on immigration, much like Roy Beck, a darling of both Lou Dobbs and David Duke (remember him?). The fact that Dobbs parrots racists like Beck indicates to me that he has no credibility–and CNN should drop him like a hot rock.
The immigration debate is increasingly mired by covert, mainstream-in-appearance-only racist groups that use all kind of evidence–some of it literally true, or partially true, but always skewed to their advantage–to further their white supremacist agenda. It is best to be skeptical and remember the old saw, “If it walks like a duck…”
American mainstream news media, especially in D.C., operates in a vacuum. These guys and gals who are there to tell us what is happening in our world are actually playing a role, or auditioning for a role. Like Hollywood, D.C. attracts people who aspire to become stars. The news is secondary to them. They know how to use the news to make news and to stay on the air or to remain on the front page. Dobbs is a long time political whore and uses political and social issues to further his career and maybe win an award! Fuck the news. I’ve got a ladder to climb.
Hoa binh
Hey queensbee,
Apples and Oranges?Quebec is verdant, the populace educated AND fiercely independent and self-reliant. With a fertility rate of ~1.5 and a high adoption rate they seem like they have reasonable self-control.
I’ll wait for you to play the race card but Mexicans are relatively under-educated, fertility rate of 3.5 and beholding, to a fault, to the Roman Catholic empire. They perpetuate, and breed into, poverty. A few will boot-strap but most will settle for less and be thankful. Isn’t that what all good masters want?
As I said, when it comes to the immigration issue, it seems like the neo-liberal operatives lurk on the commondreams website
You can’t keep a good scare campaign down. This from the Prime Minister of Australia.
http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/ban-refugees-with-hiv-pm/2007/06/01/1180205464345.html
“Mr Howard today said a review of the situation was imminent and the best outcome would be a ban on migrants and refugees who were HIV positive or who had leprosy from entering the country.”
Regarding Randall Burns comment: “Journalists should be to try to create an environment in which hard-nosed accuracy on these issues is fostered and encouraged, and the overall quality of journalism is increased. Vanden Huevel must also take it upon herself to identify fringe sources she uses-particularly in dealing with an issue in which wealthy interests are so heavily involved as immigration.”
Anyone who bothered to click on the link provided by Vanden Heuvel (a “thirty-year period”), will discover his grandstanding is asinine. What part of THIRTY years, NOT THREE is so hard to get?!!!
“Keep the lepers and other strangers out. It’s the christian thing to do.”
This is their election year issue. They are weak on the environment so we should apply pressure there. Knowing Rove who attacks strengths instead of weakness, his recommendation will be to attack democrats by vilifying environmentalism. This can backfire. Tell your Republican friends the environmental consequences of the bush administration.
http://oversight.house.gov/investigations.asp?ID=121
Lou Dobbs is a voice for millions of people in this country who have been forced to work for less or who have lost their jobs to various corporate-sponsored schemes designed to ensure that there is a glut of workers for them to exploit. The 38 million who are deemed to live in poverty have to compete with illegal aliens who slip across the southern border and are eagerly snapped up by employers who are willing to break the law. IT workers are not even given a chance to compete with the hordes of H1B visa holders that are brought into the country on the back of outright lies by Bill Gates and his billionaire cronies that there is a shortage of American citizens that are capable of doing the work.
I work in a large corporate IT company and over the past seven years whole departments have been purged of American citizens and replaced by H1B holders from India; I estimate that about 60% of the workforce is now Indian.
Who, other than Dobbs, pays any attention to the resulting unemployment, loss of home, lack of health care, breakup of families, bankruptcies? Certainly not the corporate welfare queens, nor is congress.
This is corporate globalization at work. NAFTA and the other Free-to-exploit Trade Agreements have been instrumental in driving people across our borders. Remember that these agreements contain clauses that give power to corporations to challenge governments (even our Federal and State governments).
Dobbs has never been guilty of “vilifying immigrants”. Such a comment immediately suggests that The Nation is just as guilty of failing to check the facts as Dobbs is. But, of course, this is actually a play on words aimed at muddying the waters by confusing that which is legitimate with that which is not.
“Searching high and low to find ways illegal immigration hurts the US…” No. It is obvious. For instance, just look at those swift meat packing plants that were raided by the INS. Next day hundreds of Americans had $18 per hour jobs instead of being unemployed.
In my opinion, those that are comfortable with having millions of aliens illegally working here are guilty of directly enabling the corporate rape of the country. The immigration bill before congress is a sham. Everything will be done to dilute the labor force and nothing will be done to stem the tide of people entering the country illegally.
Oh.. for the days of Murrow and Cronkite…
The talking heads of modern day “journalism” are no more than that…talking heads. They are beholden to the corporate media monopolies and only care about the bottom line. And Lou Dobbs is just one of the prime examples of how low it all can go to make a buck.
He sounds nearly rabid in his denunciation and fear-mongering against immigrants (that’s taken from the very few times I’ve seen him…he goes off my tv very quickly…actually CNN isn’t on very often). That CNN has him on at all shows how seriously LIKE Faux News they have become.
We need a revival of the FAIRNESS DOCTRINE at a bare minimum to try to retrieve some semblance of balance to the right-wing propaganda that is now passing as the national discussion of issues.
###
As part of the presumed 60% workforce that is now Indian, I apologize for taking the jobs “Americans” (read: white people) are entitled to by virtue of their white privilege. I am so sorry I took advantage of the educational opportunities in this country and did well. I feel terrible that my mom and dad worked in a meatpacking plant for less than $18 an hour to send me to school while “Americans” were denied jobs. What a horrible sin I’ve committed! All the black and brown people from “over there” have the good jobs and live in the suburbs while all the “Americans” are forced into unemployment, drive taxis, clean houses, pick fruit and vegetables for pennnies, care for the elderly and live in slums. Shame on me for making life so hard for the “Americans!” I better go back to where I came from before I give someone leprosy. I also apologize that while I studied the white frat boys partied and assumed a job would just be there waiting for them because they were white.
“Leonhardt reported that there have indeed been approximately 7,000 diagnosed cases – but not over the past three years as Dobbs would have viewers believe. Rather, these incidents occurred over a thirty-year period…”
I don’t even have a television, so I can’t comment on Lou Dobbs’ veracity as a journalist or anything else. But I do think immigration should be sharply curtailed on the grounds that America should be looking after its own people.
But Mr. Dobbs must be doing a pretty good job since the only actual discrepancy Ms Vanden Heuvel mentions is that he said 7,000 cases of leprosy occurred in three years instead of thirty years. This is hardly a major error, and one which all experienced journalists are guilty of. Accordingly, Ms Vanden Heuvel strikes me as being guilty of slander and innuendo–exactly what she accuses Mr. Dobbs of doing.
Where are the facts, Ms Vanden Heuvel?
Actually, the facts are a little different than that. The New York Times link in my original post suggests that there may be a lot more than 7,000 cases of leprosy. The NYT acknowledges that immigration(I would expect tourism also contributes) has been a major factor in the spread of leprosy. That suggests that those wealthy interests that have profitted from immigration the last 40 years should pay to clean up a mess they have created. Even a controlled case of leprosy involves a great deal of pain and suffering.
Sadly, much of the research on the spread of leprosy is questionable. More resources need to be applied to research in this area–and those interests that lobbied for and profitted from mass immigration should be targeted to foot the bill. When the NYT source claimed there were a “lot more” cases out there-what does that mean? Dobbs’ sources may be questionable, but how far off is he really? I don’t see any clear consensus on the estimates. I see a government source claim there are only 7,000 cases-and what seem like responsible professionals seriously questioning that estimate as far too low. Can we really expect folks to care much about journalistic details if we see international movements of people associated with a major disease outbreak in the US?
Thanks Lou. Thanks a LOT. Thanks for sticking your foot in your mouth and hurting the debate with xenophobia. Leprosy? Please.
killyt,I think the person you’re directing your comments to was talking about outsourcing. The way things are going, you’ll likely get outsourced also. That’s why I decided not to stick with IT. What’s sad is that I once had an IT job. I was able to learn it w/o a degree. All I had to do was punch in command and field calls and mount tapes. Normally those jobs require an education, even back then, but they had to hire from within the hospital since they didn’t pay enough money for those with degrees. So they had to settle for me, and I did pretty well, until I got laid off.
“As part of the presumed 60% workforce that is now Indian, I apologize for taking the jobs “Americans” (read: white people) are entitled to by virtue of their white privilege.”
I think all legal citizens, regardless of their color is entitled to a job. Racial privilege has nothing to do with it.
“I am so sorry I took advantage of the educational opportunities in this country and did well.”
Good for you. I tried that, and just ended up over my head. Must have been my fault. Shoulda worked “harder”. You know, all that Horatio Alger B.S. We’re the land ‘o milk and honey, dontcha know?
“I feel terrible that my mom and dad worked in a meatpacking plant for less than $18 an hour to send me to school while “Americans” were denied jobs.”
Man, that’s more than I make now. I’ll pack meat for that kind of bread. I was trying to swing it on 4.75 an hour. I think my mom and dad each made about 10 at the time, and they could barely help. For some reason, it was hard for me to concentrate on my philosophy class.
“What a horrible sin I’ve committed!”
Nah. If you got there, good for you.
“All the black and brown people from “over there” have the good jobs and live in the suburbs”
Take the suburbs. I prefer city living.
“while all the “Americans” are forced into unemployment, drive taxis, clean houses, pick fruit and vegetables for pennnies, care for the elderly and live in slums.”
‘Aint it a shame.
“Shame on me for making life so hard for the “Americans!” I better go back to where I came from before I give someone leprosy.”
Now, now.
“I also apologize that while I studied the white frat boys partied and assumed a job would just be there waiting for them because they were white.”
And most of them had jobs waiting for them unfortunately. Although, I think their money and mom and pop’s connections had more to do with it than race. My sister’s friend, a white guy, only had telemarketing jobs waiting for him, and I know dozens more like him.
DOH! He was an English Major. Damn him!
Truth is, the recent college grads are getting the shaft also. The jobs aren’t there for the most part, and they’re in debt up to their necks.
I’m glad I cut my losses and got out of the higher ed racket. Call me a “loser”, folks. C’mon. It’s the “new” word.