Before anyone starts getting out the bunting and blue ribbons for Lou Dobbs, I am not sure that anywhere in the (now largely complete) discussions of his departure from CNN that there is any clear evidence that he did anything to distinguish himself as worthy of all that discussion. Can’t the chatter be in proportion to the impact, just this once?
Ex-CNN Anchor Lou Dobbs
For years now, Mr. Dobbs has clearly labeled himself an “Advocate Journalist” – as opposed to being “Just A Journalist”, presumably. In so contrasting himself, he’s being clear. Since most of us have a sense of what we think a good (regular) journalist’s work would be, it is valid to decide what it is that would separate the good Advocacy Journalists from the bad. In short, shouldn’t we judge an Advocate Journalist as to the success of their advocacy?
I can’t say I ever went out of my way to watch Mr. Dobbs in any capacity. Business news bores me silly in general, and even when he transcended the bonds of mere business journalism, I had enough sense of Lou’s worldview from some of his past New Economy work at Space.com to know that his brand of non-linear thinking was not for me. Why not just go right to Art Bell’s “Coast to Coast” for the good stuff? Still, Lou’s recent visit to Fox News got me to pay it attention. In general, I find the modern tendency to work the storytellers into the story to be maddening, and if nothing else, proof at how far away from useful the media has strayed. Ignoring it won’t put the genie back in the bottle, so I’ve got to engage.
No matter how one feels about Fox, I have never heard Bill O’Reilly described as modest and deferential about his profession’s role in the world. For that reason, it is not a particularly high bar to be able to get him to gush over you when you are willing come on his show to malign one of his competitors – especially when said guest can be painted as another victim of bias. That visit might have been one of Lou’s most high profile appearances, and I find nothing in it to suggest he did much for his pet causes for the effort.
Is the immigration issue, as Lou Dobbs would frame it, any closer to meaningful action for his effort? If we were to ask him to show some sort of result for all of the jaw-flappin’ done by him and his detractors, could he? Could anyone? Did any of the counterpoint to Lou Dobbs’ line of thinking materially gain or lose for all the dust-up? If so, I am hard pressed to point out exactly how. Beyond immigration, did Lou’s ideas about the middle-class squeeze or foreign trade imbalances sustain any meaningful move of the needle either way, for all the back-and-forth? Is there any issue we can point to as benefiting from Lou Dobbs’ successful application of Advocacy Journalism? If you think so, I am all ears as to what exactly that benefit was.
I am inclined to call “baloney” on anyone who might suggest the entire story arc of Lou-Dobbs-as-Advocate-Journalist changed much of anything, least of all the debate. Where the rubber meets the road, the immigration debate is still a caricature of itself, with one-dimensional villains and victims maintaining their usual posture in front of those somehow sympathetic or entirely apathetic. There aren’t too many other folks who name themselves Advocacy Journalists, but there are plenty of folks who occupy space on the program schedule of news outlets who won’t apply the restraints of traditional journalism to themselves. They make no bones of their bias, and, actually, differentiate themselves precisely on the basis of that bias. That’s fine. It’s a free country. Do what ya like.
From what I can see, Advocacy Journalism generates neither much light or much heat, and the net impact of having one of its leading lights go dim is something so slight, one has to wonder why anyone cared either way to begin with.
