SUBSCRIBE TO OUR FREE NEWSLETTER
Daily news & progressive opinion—funded by the people, not the corporations—delivered straight to your inbox.
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
5
#000000
#FFFFFF
Lou Dobbs: New Show, Same Old Hypocrisy?
Nov 12, 2010
Given all the recent speculation about a possible Lou Dobbs candidacy in the 2012 election, the recent news that Dobbs will instead join the Fox Business Network may strike some people as quite anticlimactic.
Starting in the new year, the former CNN host whose long-running show Lou Dobbs Tonight commanded more than 800,000 viewers, will be taking a job hosting a show at Rupert Murdoch's relatively unwatched business network.
On the final episode of CNN's Lou Dobbs Tonight, exactly one year ago today, Dobbs told his audience that he was being urged by leaders to "go beyond the role at CNN and to engage in constructive problem-solving as well as to contribute positively to the great understanding of the issues of our day." The ex-TV host, who made his career bashing undocumented immigrants and their employers, stated in June that he had not "ruled out" a run for Senate or the presidency in the next general election.
However, last month The Nation revealed that this longtime critic of "illegal aliens" has himself relied for years on undocumented labor for the upkeep of the grounds of his estate and his show jumping horses.
Just a month after Dobbs was called to account for his hypocrisy on immigration on MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell show and on ABC News, he now appears to be planning a return "to a business-oriented brand" associated with his earlier days at CNN, Jack Mirkinson recently commented on Huffington Post.
Indeed, this may seem a less embarrassing prospect for Dobbs than attempting to turn his tirades against the "illegals" who for years tended to his estate and horses into a political campaign. Even by the admittedly low standards enshrined in Fox programming, Dobbs's credibility as a champion of a get-tough approach to immigration may be destroyed beyond repair.
Yet when it comes to his record on business reporting, Dobbs's hypocrisy has been no less flagrant.
On his CNN show, Dobbs was an outspoken critic of corporate outsourcing, and even created a website, "Exporting America," devoted to exposing individual corporations that he accused of shutting down U.S. factories and moving production overseas to cut labor costs. Yet as a 2004 Columbia Journalism Review article, The Two Faces of Lou Dobbs, documented, many of the same corporations criticized on Dobbs's "Exporting America" site were praised by Dobbs in his now-cancelled exclusive investment newsletter, Lou Dobbs Money Letter. In his Money Letter, Dobbs offered paid subscribers tips on investments, typically going "out of his way to praise [the companies he recommended] as good corporate citizens," according CJR's Zachary Roth.
As Roth noted in his June 2004 article, some of the companies featured in the Lou Dobbs Money Letter, under the heading 'doing good business with good people,' would be familiar to the audience of Dobbs's "Exporting America." In fact, CJC found that of the 14 companies Dobbs highlighted for investors in his newsletter in 2003-4, eight appeared during the same timeframe on his CNN website as companies that outsourced jobs.
It is perhaps not surprising that Dobbs is being offered a position at the Fox Business Network. After all, being an embarrassment to the journalism profession has never been an impediment to landing a job at Fox. And two of the special talents Dobbs demonstrated at CNN, fearmongering about immigrants and entertaining racist conspiracy theories about Obama's birth certificate, may even be prerequisites to getting one's own show at Murdoch's News Corp empire.
But even so. As Media Matters, America's Voice and Lulac commented in a recent press release, "Lou Dobbs does not deserve a platform on any television network - even one with ratings as low as Fox Business Network."
An Urgent Message From Our Co-Founder
Dear Common Dreams reader, It’s been nearly 30 years since I co-founded Common Dreams with my late wife, Lina Newhouser. We had the radical notion that journalism should serve the public good, not corporate profits. It was clear to us from the outset what it would take to build such a project. No paid advertisements. No corporate sponsors. No millionaire publisher telling us what to think or do. Many people said we wouldn't last a year, but we proved those doubters wrong. Together with a tremendous team of journalists and dedicated staff, we built an independent media outlet free from the constraints of profits and corporate control. Our mission has always been simple: To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. Building Common Dreams was not easy. Our survival was never guaranteed. When you take on the most powerful forces—Wall Street greed, fossil fuel industry destruction, Big Tech lobbyists, and uber-rich oligarchs who have spent billions upon billions rigging the economy and democracy in their favor—the only bulwark you have is supporters who believe in your work. But here’s the urgent message from me today. It's never been this bad out there. And it's never been this hard to keep us going. At the very moment Common Dreams is most needed, the threats we face are intensifying. We need your support now more than ever. We don't accept corporate advertising and never will. We don't have a paywall because we don't think people should be blocked from critical news based on their ability to pay. Everything we do is funded by the donations of readers like you. When everyone does the little they can afford, we are strong. But if that support retreats or dries up, so do we. Will you donate now to make sure Common Dreams not only survives but thrives? —Craig Brown, Co-founder |
Our work is licensed under Creative Commons (CC BY-NC-ND 3.0). Feel free to republish and share widely.
Isabel Macdonald
Isabel Macdonald is a Montreal-based freelance journalist and the former communications director of the media watch group FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting).
Given all the recent speculation about a possible Lou Dobbs candidacy in the 2012 election, the recent news that Dobbs will instead join the Fox Business Network may strike some people as quite anticlimactic.
Starting in the new year, the former CNN host whose long-running show Lou Dobbs Tonight commanded more than 800,000 viewers, will be taking a job hosting a show at Rupert Murdoch's relatively unwatched business network.
On the final episode of CNN's Lou Dobbs Tonight, exactly one year ago today, Dobbs told his audience that he was being urged by leaders to "go beyond the role at CNN and to engage in constructive problem-solving as well as to contribute positively to the great understanding of the issues of our day." The ex-TV host, who made his career bashing undocumented immigrants and their employers, stated in June that he had not "ruled out" a run for Senate or the presidency in the next general election.
However, last month The Nation revealed that this longtime critic of "illegal aliens" has himself relied for years on undocumented labor for the upkeep of the grounds of his estate and his show jumping horses.
Just a month after Dobbs was called to account for his hypocrisy on immigration on MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell show and on ABC News, he now appears to be planning a return "to a business-oriented brand" associated with his earlier days at CNN, Jack Mirkinson recently commented on Huffington Post.
Indeed, this may seem a less embarrassing prospect for Dobbs than attempting to turn his tirades against the "illegals" who for years tended to his estate and horses into a political campaign. Even by the admittedly low standards enshrined in Fox programming, Dobbs's credibility as a champion of a get-tough approach to immigration may be destroyed beyond repair.
Yet when it comes to his record on business reporting, Dobbs's hypocrisy has been no less flagrant.
On his CNN show, Dobbs was an outspoken critic of corporate outsourcing, and even created a website, "Exporting America," devoted to exposing individual corporations that he accused of shutting down U.S. factories and moving production overseas to cut labor costs. Yet as a 2004 Columbia Journalism Review article, The Two Faces of Lou Dobbs, documented, many of the same corporations criticized on Dobbs's "Exporting America" site were praised by Dobbs in his now-cancelled exclusive investment newsletter, Lou Dobbs Money Letter. In his Money Letter, Dobbs offered paid subscribers tips on investments, typically going "out of his way to praise [the companies he recommended] as good corporate citizens," according CJR's Zachary Roth.
As Roth noted in his June 2004 article, some of the companies featured in the Lou Dobbs Money Letter, under the heading 'doing good business with good people,' would be familiar to the audience of Dobbs's "Exporting America." In fact, CJC found that of the 14 companies Dobbs highlighted for investors in his newsletter in 2003-4, eight appeared during the same timeframe on his CNN website as companies that outsourced jobs.
It is perhaps not surprising that Dobbs is being offered a position at the Fox Business Network. After all, being an embarrassment to the journalism profession has never been an impediment to landing a job at Fox. And two of the special talents Dobbs demonstrated at CNN, fearmongering about immigrants and entertaining racist conspiracy theories about Obama's birth certificate, may even be prerequisites to getting one's own show at Murdoch's News Corp empire.
But even so. As Media Matters, America's Voice and Lulac commented in a recent press release, "Lou Dobbs does not deserve a platform on any television network - even one with ratings as low as Fox Business Network."
Isabel Macdonald
Isabel Macdonald is a Montreal-based freelance journalist and the former communications director of the media watch group FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting).
Given all the recent speculation about a possible Lou Dobbs candidacy in the 2012 election, the recent news that Dobbs will instead join the Fox Business Network may strike some people as quite anticlimactic.
Starting in the new year, the former CNN host whose long-running show Lou Dobbs Tonight commanded more than 800,000 viewers, will be taking a job hosting a show at Rupert Murdoch's relatively unwatched business network.
On the final episode of CNN's Lou Dobbs Tonight, exactly one year ago today, Dobbs told his audience that he was being urged by leaders to "go beyond the role at CNN and to engage in constructive problem-solving as well as to contribute positively to the great understanding of the issues of our day." The ex-TV host, who made his career bashing undocumented immigrants and their employers, stated in June that he had not "ruled out" a run for Senate or the presidency in the next general election.
However, last month The Nation revealed that this longtime critic of "illegal aliens" has himself relied for years on undocumented labor for the upkeep of the grounds of his estate and his show jumping horses.
Just a month after Dobbs was called to account for his hypocrisy on immigration on MSNBC's Lawrence O'Donnell show and on ABC News, he now appears to be planning a return "to a business-oriented brand" associated with his earlier days at CNN, Jack Mirkinson recently commented on Huffington Post.
Indeed, this may seem a less embarrassing prospect for Dobbs than attempting to turn his tirades against the "illegals" who for years tended to his estate and horses into a political campaign. Even by the admittedly low standards enshrined in Fox programming, Dobbs's credibility as a champion of a get-tough approach to immigration may be destroyed beyond repair.
Yet when it comes to his record on business reporting, Dobbs's hypocrisy has been no less flagrant.
On his CNN show, Dobbs was an outspoken critic of corporate outsourcing, and even created a website, "Exporting America," devoted to exposing individual corporations that he accused of shutting down U.S. factories and moving production overseas to cut labor costs. Yet as a 2004 Columbia Journalism Review article, The Two Faces of Lou Dobbs, documented, many of the same corporations criticized on Dobbs's "Exporting America" site were praised by Dobbs in his now-cancelled exclusive investment newsletter, Lou Dobbs Money Letter. In his Money Letter, Dobbs offered paid subscribers tips on investments, typically going "out of his way to praise [the companies he recommended] as good corporate citizens," according CJR's Zachary Roth.
As Roth noted in his June 2004 article, some of the companies featured in the Lou Dobbs Money Letter, under the heading 'doing good business with good people,' would be familiar to the audience of Dobbs's "Exporting America." In fact, CJC found that of the 14 companies Dobbs highlighted for investors in his newsletter in 2003-4, eight appeared during the same timeframe on his CNN website as companies that outsourced jobs.
It is perhaps not surprising that Dobbs is being offered a position at the Fox Business Network. After all, being an embarrassment to the journalism profession has never been an impediment to landing a job at Fox. And two of the special talents Dobbs demonstrated at CNN, fearmongering about immigrants and entertaining racist conspiracy theories about Obama's birth certificate, may even be prerequisites to getting one's own show at Murdoch's News Corp empire.
But even so. As Media Matters, America's Voice and Lulac commented in a recent press release, "Lou Dobbs does not deserve a platform on any television network - even one with ratings as low as Fox Business Network."
We've had enough. The 1% own and operate the corporate media. They are doing everything they can to defend the status quo, squash dissent and protect the wealthy and the powerful. The Common Dreams media model is different. We cover the news that matters to the 99%. Our mission? To inform. To inspire. To ignite change for the common good. How? Nonprofit. Independent. Reader-supported. Free to read. Free to republish. Free to share. With no advertising. No paywalls. No selling of your data. Thousands of small donations fund our newsroom and allow us to continue publishing. Can you chip in? We can't do it without you. Thank you.