CNN’s Lou Dobbs, whose influential business reporting played a vital role in putting the Cable News Network on the map as “the most trusted name in news,” has estranged himself from his audience with what critics call “wingnuttery,” “jowl-jiggling windbaggery” and “paranoid bloviations” in relentlessly beating what his boss has called “a dead story” – the conspiracy theorists known as birthers.
For his part, Dobbs has blasted a hole through his purported objectivity by referring to his hecklers as “limp-minded, lily-livered lefty lemmings.” The alliterative assault would seem to include even such stalwarts of the radical right as Ann Coulter and Bill O’Reilly, who have dismissed the birthers – those who believe Barack Obama was born not in Hawaii but in Kenya, making him ineligible to be president – as cranks and Dobbs as a ratings-hungry pot-stirrer.
If a ratings boost is the goal, Dobbs has bombed.
Lou Dobbs
The New York Observer examined Dobbs’ Nielsen ratings from July 15, when he first offered the birthers a forum, until July 28 and found that “as criticism of Mr. Dobbs has continued to go up, his ratings at CNN have continued to go down.”
During that period, “Mr. Dobbs’ 7 p.m. show on CNN has averaged 653,000 total viewers and 157,000 in the 25-54″ age demographic, the Observer reported. “By contrast, during the first two weeks of the month (July 1 to July 14) Mr. Dobbs averaged 771,000 total viewers and 218,000 in the 25-54 demo. In other words, Mr. Dobbs’ audience has decreased 15 percent in total viewers and 27 percent in the demo since the start of the controversy.”
The Observer also contrasted the second-half July ratings with the second quarter of 2009, when Dobbs enjoyed an average of 769,000 total viewers and 222,000 in the 25-54 age group.
Among the most vocal and visible critics of Dobbs’ birthers commentaries are the liberal Southern Poverty Law Center and the watchdog group Media Matters, which bought a week of advertising time on Dobbs’ own CNN show to rebut them.
Jon Klein, president of CNN U.S., has defended Dobbs even though a leaked internal memo he wrote to Dobbs’ staff about the birthers coverage said, “it seems this story is dead.”
Saying Dobbs was merely reporting on the birthers controversy and not assailing the evidence of Obama’s birth in Hawaii, Klein drew a shot from The Washington Post.
His position, Post TV columnist Lisa de Moraes wrote, “explains their upcoming documentary: ‘The World: Flat. We Report — You Decide.’”
Click here to sign up for the Muckety Newsletter
5 Comments
#1. Chandra Naraine 08.05.2009
Thank you for posting Lou Dobbs’ resume and for giving him more ‘air’ time than he deserves. The guy is a pathological xenophobe, among his other attributes, and this is the real issue which everyone seems bent on dodging. One more subject on the long list of taboo issues which causes the media to tuck its cowardly tail between its legs and slink away. Just another reason to change my news viewing habits and the corresponding channel.
#2. Captain Steve 08.05.2009
I’m more likely to watch Dobbs now. Obama’s hidden records and natural born citizenship are legitimate issues.
It’s no surprise that Hillary Clinton just went to Kenya to reinforce the cover-up.
I still want answers. Obummer, put up or get out!!!! All he has to do is make the following official public statement,
“I Barack Obama authorize the State of Hawaii to release and make public all of my records on file.”
That’s it. Issue over. But he won’t because he’s a fraud!! Obama knows that millions of citizens want to see it yet he continues to hide it. What/why is he hiding? and most disturbingly, why don’t BHO’s supporters want to know the whole truth, especially since there’s a reward of $100,000 for proof that Obama is a “natural born” citizen of the United States.
OBAMA, STOP HIDING. SHOW US THE LONG FORM BIRTH CERTIFICATE AND YOUR OTHER RECORDS!!!!!
#3. Joe 08.05.2009
This is a non-issue. President Obama doesn’t have to prove anything to you or anyone else Steve. Even World Net Daily has said that Obama’s birth certificate is legitimate.
Are you really so deranged and off your rocker as to believe that the Honolulu Advertiser would have posted a fake birth announcement in it’s August 4, 1961 edition?
There is no fraud being perpetrated here Steve. For God’s sake, please get back on your meds!
#4. Ace 08.05.2009
If Obama went on national TV and held up his “long form” certificate, the birthers would howl that it was a forgery.
If the charges had any validity why didn’t his rivals McCain and Clinton use it against him? Why hasn’t Newt Gingrich or other GOP stalwarts used it against him? Could they be part of the conspiracy, too?
#5. Dobbs Got Canned by Nielsen Co Scam 11.13.2009
Xenophobe? I guess that’s why Dobbs is married to a Hispanic woman.
What we need here is a basic English lesson for you ENGLISH SPEAKERS:
When the word “illegal” modifies “immigrant” the translation isn’t racism. You really shouldn’t transpose words. Words matter. They have meaning.
Do any of you attacking Dobbs have children? Do any of you want to prevent MS13 and other ruthless gangs that have set up shop in the US from continuing to kill of AMERICANS? Do any of you throwing out the accusation of “racism” live in a border state? Do you know that the biggest racists are the folks chopping off the heads of their OWN countrymen South of the border for refusing to do the drug cartel’s wicked business? Do you know that in Mexico the people who are looked down on the most are the Native indian peoples who did not intermarry with the spaniards and kept their own language? Do you know that the drug cartels were engaged in TERRORISM long before there was a 911 and that living in those countries is HELL because of them? Do you not remember that TERRORISM is illegal — that our Homeland Security is supposed to shield those who have settled in this country from the war next door?
Everyone deserves to be safe. We have enough crime as it is. All English speakers who can’t see that it’s about SAFETY and not racism must be doing too much South American cocaine & Afghanistan heroin entering over the Mexican borders to think straight.
Xenophobia this subject isn’t. Dobbs comprehends that compassion is to offer opportunity and justice to those who are here by legal means. That includes other Latinos. Believe it or not, many Latinos follow the law and those of you who think it is “racist” for immigrants to be expected to have a background check and make sure they aren’t cop-killing criminals or terrorists crossing weak borders need to wake up and realize that the IMMIGRANTS came here for safety. They don’t WANT the problems of their home country coming with them anymore than Dobbs and most other Americans do!
This country rewards everyone who plays by the rules — or at least it was supposed to. Stop rooting for the people that have the most to hide — not the people who pick crops but the illegal drug pushers and their gangs — and start thinking about your own security.
If you can’t think about your OWN safety, my guess is it’s because you are living in some white flight suburban neighborhood that you falsely believe to be “safe”, in which case you need to get out and see the world, and interview the hispanic mothers and fathers losing their kids to gangs IN THIS COUNTRY that are funded by drug money and South American cartels.
I don’t care if you are Lou Dobbs or a first-generation immigrant: If you have any sense at all, you care about your children. Latinos are no different. They care about their ability to get a job rather than GET SHOT in a random drive by targeting some “snitch” in a drug deal gone bad because THE MAN across the border orders the hit. To ask Hispanics, among others, to live in slums caused by drugs and violence as a direct result of all the criminals crossing the border is the REAL racism. They deserve a better life and so do we. The real xenophobes are the idiots who fail to realize we all want the same thing: opportunity. Safety. Security.
If it still isn’t clear: let me talk in pictures: Imagine a rowboat. Now put your entire city in a 10×6 boat and watch it sink because you were so sure that political correctness would save everyone. We have to make it possible for our country to remain strong so that the United States is ABLE to help others who are here to work and live within the law. We can’t do that if we become another extension of the crime, violence, lawlessness and joblessness that exists in societies that are not law abiding over those borders. If those societies were not torn by lawlessness do you think their economies would be broken enough that millions of people would move here? So the proof that there are problems that can easily cross our borders if we fail to protect them is the very fact we have so many people scrambling to GET OUT!
It’s not the fault of anyone who comes here for a better life. But the ones who have criminal records to hide are the ones who don’t want to immigrate legally. And those are the people some of you are going to bat for? Where is your respect for the law-abiding Asian, Latino, Mid East and others who didn’t break the rule of law? Or are “THEY” all one big bunch of people you can’t tell apart because you think they “all look alike” and “all come here illegally” and “all support illegal immigration” and “all have hurt feelings listening to Dobbs”? If you think THEY (immigrants) are all alike and uniformly hate what Dobbs has to say, then you haven’t been listening closely enough to what Dobbs has been saying to portray his intentions accurately or for that matter his audience. The real xenophobics just use political correctness to cover for the fact that they aren’t looking at these people as individuals at all. Newsflash: Legal immigrants want safe communities and jobs too. Border control is about CRIME CONTROL, not racism. We need to give the people who jumped through the hoops a real chance at a better life — not a ghetto filled with illegal drug runners and terrorists from MS13 to pick off their precious children (and ours).
Leave a Comment