You've Been Dobbs'ed

There's a new word that needs adding to Webster's Dictionary this year, and that word is "dobbs'ed." The word simply means that you have watched a news program and mistook an editorial comment for news. The essence of being dobbs'ed is that the program is ostensibly a fair and balanced news program, not an editorial show. Thus, the mistake is no fault of your own, but rather the fault of the obsession with politically-minded news shows promulgated by the 24-hour news market.

The origin of the word is CNN's celebrated journalist Lou Dobbs. On April 15, 2005, Lou Dobbs reported on his show Lou Dobbs Tonight that the migration of illegal Mexican immigrants across the Mexican-American border in Texas had caused an increase in cases of leprosy in the United States. This was not a small increase. Dobbs reported some 7,000 new cases of leprosy caused by illegally migrating Mexicans in the past three years (2002-2005). Expendable to Dobbs, apparently, was the truth. In fact, only some 150 cases of leprosy had been reported in the United States during that three-year period. The 7,000 cases Lou Dobbs reported was the number of leprosy cases reported in the United States overall over the last 30 years (not 3 years)! What's more, there's no link whatsoever, except for the one fabricated by Dobbs, to Mexican immigrants, much less illegal Mexican immigrants!

What actually happened here is readily apparent. Dobbs managed to get the numbers wrong and magically link the falsified numbers to a fabricated demographic in order to propogate his own political agenda. Not surprisingly, Dobbs is a well-known and outspoken critic of Mexican immigration. He openly supports programs like the Minutemen Project in Texas, and is against amnesty or path to citizenship proposals for Mexican immigrants. This was no mistake. This was an open and brazen fabrication by an established journalist in an effort to support a political agenda during prime time on a nationally recognized and celebrated all-news channel. Lou Dobbs is as dishonest as his facts are wrong. Remarkably, Dobbs's wife is a Mexican-American (and was arrested, no less, for carrying a loaded weapon into an airport)!

But what really frosts me is that Dobbs, though criticized, never missed a day of work. He was never censured and never suspended by CNN. His fabrication, though causing a stir among critics of the show, was never really questioned. How could an established news program make such a mistake? Where did the link to illegal Mexican immigrants come from? Isn't there something wrong with a journalist fabricating reports to advance a political agenda?

And finally, why the double standard? On April 4, 2007 (something about April apparently), Don Imus was suspended and kicked off the air altogether shortly thereafter for racially disparaging comments about the Rutgers women's basketball team. While inexusable in its own right, Imus's show is a long-standing political satire show. Imus is a essentially a smart and politically savvy comedian! Dobbs is apparently a journalist! Shouldn't a complete fabrication on a news program by an established journalist be a more serious offense than insensitive comments of a comedian? Isn't Dobbs charging illegal immigrants from Mexico with transporting a deadly disease to the country equally as racially insensitive as Imus's comment?

Which brings me to another problem with Dobbs. While we are not encouraged to take Imus's show seriously -- it's held out as purely as entertainment -- Lou Dobbs is held out to the public as a fair and balanced news program. While it's plainly editorial to me and many other people (including, CNN I think they would admit if pressed), there are no doubt tens of thousands of Americans who tune in nightly to Dobbs and believe they are watching news. And that's the most offensive part about Dobbs's lies. He knows exactly what he is doing when feeds a racist line to viewers who are looking for the statistic to back up their already xenophobic outlook on the Mexican immigration issue. I have little doubt that the next day all across the country, in coffee shops and by water coolers everywhere, some poor sap was quoting Dobbs and the fabricated leprosy issue as reason enough to send every brown Mexican home and keep all the rest out. You, my friend, have been dobbs'ed.