What CNN told Lou Dobbs
One could imagine several possible scenarios in which CNN let the popular and feisty host Lou Dobbs know his populist opinions no longer fit with their liberal views, so they needed or wanted to part ways. But what he told Fox News’ Bill O’Reilly about the conversation at CNN that led to his departure…..was a jaw dropper. To me, anyway.
DOBBS: …The only issue that came up in the last 90 days of my employment there was Jon Klein and I had talked about the issue of opinion itself and advocacy journalism, and he wanted to take the network in a different direction.
On hearing this live on The O’Reilly Factor, I thought….so CNN is giving in to its liberal leanings. But that was not the implication after all…
O’REILLY: But what did you hear? I mean, what — did you hear that they were uncomfortable with you?
DOBBS: No, what I heard very directly was that they had decided to take CNN in a direction in which advocacy journalism would not — wouldn’t be a part of it.
O’REILLY: OK, so they just wanted — they just want an objective presentation in primetime.
DOBBS: Correct. Correct.
This was the jaw-dropper. CNN, uncomfortable with Dobbs because they aim to project objective journalism? Cleansing the network of advocacy journalism?
O’Reilly struggles to process that thought himself.
O’REILLY: …but the perception was things weren’t — the perception was you were just too opinionated and they didn’t want that.
DOBBS: That was — well, obviously, that’s what they didn’t want, because the direction was to move toward purely a neutral presentation.
This is patently not true, though ‘plausible deniability’ is a politically operative term right now in designing strategy. Anyone who understands how the communciations media form public opinion can see and define all the ways bias and advocacy are programmed into news content, and it is clear throughout much of CNN’s programming. Camera angles, lighting, closeups, sound bites and editing, music beds underlying special reports, even the terminology (style book) used to refer to and identify groups and individuals……all reveal (or betray) a predisposed ideology.
No more advocacy journalism? The truth is, staying power depends on what (or whose) causes you advocate. The ratings tell that story better than most highly-paid news celebrities even understand.