Cranky Uncle Lou Dobbs Stacks the Deck

[Cheney Killed Bambi]

Only Lou Dobbs could take us this far through the journalistic rabbit hole: The noted fathead aired a segment on his CNN show last month that blasted the Washington Post for being biased in its coverage of immigration because—now read carefully—Post chairman Donald Graham is a trustee of a charitable foundation that gave money to a Maryland immigrant rights group. And that group published a pamphlet once that advised people on how to avoid being deported. Precisely how that logic chain is supposed to implicate the reporters and editors who actually cover immigration for the Post was left unclear in correspondent Linda Sylvester's report. Presumably the accusation is that Washington Post reporters manipulate the facts to fit a predetermined agenda.

So when Sylvester and her producer set out to find a talking head for the Post segment on Dobbs's show, they naturally sought out a neutral, unbiased journalism expert who could offer unvarnished analysis as to whether Graham's extracurricular charitable activities constituted a bias, right? Wrong.

"They called and said, 'We need an expert to criticize the Washington Post's coverage of immigration based on the fact that ... a foundation that Donald Graham is involved with gave a grant to a group ... that put out a brochure ... that, among other things, advised immigrants on how to deal with law enforcement'" says Mark Feldstein, a George Washington University professor who was contacted by a producer for Dobbs's show. "I thought, 'Wow, you're really reaching.' The first thing I teach my students is, you interview people to see what they think. You don't coach them to say what you want them to say."

In other words, Dobbs set out to produce a segment on bias in the media by seeking out an "independent expert" who would say precisely what he wanted them to say: That there's a bias in the media.

http://www.radaronline.com/exclusives/2007/05/lou-dobbs-media-bias-cnn.php


Lou Dobbs has no credibility and anyone who watches his show needs to apply several hundred billion grains of salt to everything the dude says.

[proud2BlibKansan]

1. One of my wishes

is for this asswipe to finally be discredited and no more posts praising him here.

[UTUSN]

2. Here's another discrediting of him, about his UNtruths

*******QUOTE*******

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/30/business/30leonhardt.html?_r=2&oref=slogin&ref=media&pagewanted=all&oref=slogin

Truth, Fiction and Lou Dobbs

By DAVID LEONHARDT
Published: May 30, 2007
The whole controversy involving Lou Dobbs and leprosy started with a “60 Minutes” segment a few weeks ago.

... Over the last few years, Lou Dobbs has transformed himself into arguably this country’s foremost populist. It’s an odd role, given that he spent the 1980s and ’90s buttering up chief executives on CNN, but he’s now playing it very successfully. He has become a voice for the real economic anxiety felt by many Americans. ....

For one thing, Mr. Dobbs has a somewhat flexible relationship with reality. He has said, for example, that one-third of the inmates in the federal prison system are illegal immigrants. That’s wrong, too. According to the Justice Department, 6 percent of prisoners in this country are noncitizens (compared with 7 percent of the population). For a variety of reasons, the crime rate is actually lower among immigrants than natives.

Second, Mr. Dobbs really does give airtime to white supremacy sympathizers. Ms. Cosman, who is now deceased, was a lawyer and Renaissance studies scholar, never a medical doctor or a leprosy expert. She gave speeches in which she said that Mexican immigrants had a habit of molesting children. Back in their home villages, she would explain, rape was not as serious a crime as cow stealing. The Southern Poverty Law Center keeps a list of other such guests from “Lou Dobbs Tonight.”

Finally, Mr. Dobbs is fond of darkly hinting that this country is under attack. He suggested last week that the new immigration bill in Congress could be the first step toward a new nation — a “North American union” — that combines the United States, Canada and Mexico. On other occasions, his program has described a supposed Mexican plot to reclaim the Southwest. In one such report, one of his correspondents referred to a Utah visit by Vicente Fox, then Mexico’s president, as a “Mexican military incursion.”

When I asked Mr. Dobbs about this yesterday, he said, “You’ve raised this to a level that frankly I find offensive.”

The most common complaint about him, at least from other journalists, is that his program combines factual reporting with editorializing. But I think this misses the point. Americans, as a rule, are smart enough to handle a program that mixes opinion and facts. The problem with Mr. Dobbs is that he mixes opinion and untruths. He is the heir to the nativist tradition that has long used fiction and conspiracy theories as a weapon against the Irish, the Italians, the Chinese, the Jews and, now, the Mexicans. ....

E-mail: [e-mail]

********UNQUOTE*******

[fairplay]

4. lou dobbs

I like Lou Dobbs, where else am I learning about SPP, Security and Prosperity Partnership, which advocates open borders with Mexico, a corrupt narco state run by an elite, who pay no taxes. Watch out, if you love No Child Left Behind, you love this immigration bill as both were written by Sen. Kennedy and Sen. McCain.

[Buzz Clik]

3. "Noted fathead"? Hm.