Wednesday, May 30, 2007

Lou Dobbs vs. Reality -- Who Will Win?

I read an article in the New York Times today that talked about how a Lou Dobbs guest incorrectly cited the number of leprosy cases inside the United States over the past 3 years as being 7,000, when that total applies to the number of cases over the past 30 years.

It's bad enough that this lie was ever allowed to air, but instead of Mr. Dobbs, when confronted on "60 Minutes" about it, accepting the possibility that an error might have been made on his program, he boasted,
“Well, I can tell you this. If we reported it, it’s a fact.”

What media outlet, whether mainstream or not, can afford to be so cocky about its accuracy in the age of instant, bottoms-up fact checking via the blogosphere?

Aside from this, I just feel like "Lou Dobbs Tonight" is not really a news program, but an editorial program with the filtered (and apparently in some cases, falsified) news sprinkled in to make it feel legitimate.

Just like the corners of newspapers containing news-looking ads are required to contain somewhere the word "advertisement", shouldn't there be a disclaimer at the start of "Lou Dobbs Tonight" that says something like "For Infotainment Purposes Only"?