Watching ‘Lou Dobbs Tonight’ on CNN on a nightly basis alone substantiates the necessity and relevance of the continued pursuit of this blog’s mission statement – ‘what is news?’
Honestly, the show could be repackaged as ‘Lou Dobbs Soapbox’ and the only difference is that title would be a little more accurate – Dobbs would NOT have to tinker with the content at all.
The show usually opens with the major news of the day – but this is a symbolic gesture at best. And he always falls back on his pet topics: the US trade deficit, “the war on the middle class” and his bread & butter – illegal immigration. Dobbs is quite clear on his position regarding illegal immigration – but his personal stance is not the issue here and now.
‘60 Minutes’ did a nice piece on Mr. Dobbs and his role in the realm of ‘advocacy’ journalism. And now the man who hosts the second-most watched CNN program (behind only ‘Larry King Live’) is preparing to move into the 7 pm time slot - noteworthy only because he’ll be sandwiched between Larry King at 6PM and Campbell Brown’s new program at 8 PM. And he’s expected to help bolster Brown’s new show during its infancy. This places a very intriguing personality in a very key timeslot on one of the most watched cable channels through the United States.
Lou Dobbs is, perhaps, one of the most troubling players in the current ’what is news’ problem as it exists in the 24-hour cable news realm.
His ‘news reports’ are often thinly veiled commentaries where he denounces the Iraq War, rails against the evils of illegal immigration and bemoans the plight of middle America. The program actually opens with a disclaimer of sorts, proudly announcing the show as ‘news, debate and opinion’ – but the ‘news’ is delivered with a discouraging opinion-to-fact ratio as one-sided as the proported ‘debate.’
And Dobbs has gone as far as calling himself an ‘advocacy journalist’ while maintaining that he is still a journalist all the same. What is the effect of allowing a self-confessed advocate ‘report’ the news as he intentionally peppers facts with his own personal point of view? Where is the line between journalism and commentary under the guise of reporting?
Each night, Dobbs dictates which stories will be featured on his program – which is his inalienable right as a journalist, editor and an American. The potential for problems occurs when a man, whose style now consists of shaking his head in disgust while ‘reporting’ the news, is defining the ‘news’ and delivering that aforementioned news with an intentional bias.
Objective news is an impossibility. The personal beliefs of reporters, editors and producers ALWAYS manage to corrupt the facts. Despite these inevitabilities, however, most journalists do their damndest to avoid bias – or at least to avoid INTENTIONALLY contaminating their reports with bias.
Dobbs, however, is problematic to the ‘what is news’ problem because he routinely builds his newscast around his pet topics (illegal immigration, war on the middle class, etc) while warping the ‘news’ by delivering the reports with disappointment and disgust. He editorializes while reporting and cherry picks which stories he wants to report.
But advocacy journalism is hardly new. Cronkite called the Vietnam War ’unwinnable.’ Journalists risked their safety to show the nation the brutality of the segregated American south. Editors who have pushed stories lauding gay rights, condemning deforestation or supporting free trade.
If unbiased news reporting and blowhard rants on the scale of Bill O’Reilly were opposing ends of the journalism spectrum, then Lou Dobbs would fall in the ever-widening grey area - which begins to reveal the large-scale implications/problems created by journalists like Lou Dobbs.
Does his show merely reflect the genuine concerns/interests of his viewers? Is the “news peppered with opinion” format dangerous to uninitiated viewers or is Dobbs simply offering responsible viewers a new perspective? Is the ‘news with opinion’ format so obviously just another form of commentary that viewers can easily discern ‘Lou Dobbs Tonight’ from straight news reporting – or is the format so ambiguous that it actually begins to change minds rather than just inform viewers? Do most viewers EXPECT and want news programs to deliver the news with a hint of editorializing – and is this how they decide which outlets (for example, Fox News as opposed to CBS News) to get their news from? Are most viewers savvy enought to separate opinion from fact, or are they so jaded that they believe ALL newscasts are more opinion than fact? Does his editorial judgment help his viewers by presenting them with “legitimate” stories or is he artificially inflating the dangers of illegal immigration/free trade/etc by constantly reporting on them while neglecting other “more pressing” stories?
But ultimately, Lou Dobbs – and any journalist who models him/herself after Dobbs – is most troubling because of the observer effect. An advocate journalist, by definition, exists because of the observer effect – which says that whatever you observe (or report on, as the case may be) you inherently change. Causing change, by narrowly-defining the news, becomes the point rather than ‘reporting’ the news.
What is the ‘news’ when defined by an advocate journalist – and what are the implications for journalism as a trade? Can the ideal of unbiased journalism hope to exist much longer if the grey area, represented by opinionated news reporting, becomes more popular in the increasingly segmented news media as consumers seek out outlets that cater to their personal political/social/religious beliefs?
Finally, ‘advocacy’ journalism in the hands of individual reporters is one thing – but what will define ‘news’ when massive media conglomerations, special interest groups or even the government become ‘advocates’?
