I’m all for an activist press. But I do draw the line at Lou Dobbs’ radical views:
Janet Murguia (president of La Raza): You can’t just deport 5 million [illegal immigrants]”
Lou Dobbs: “I’m tired of people – especially our elected officials – saying we can’t do anything. There are a lot of great minds in this country and if we put our minds to it, we can do anything. It’s not that we can’t do it, it’s that we choose not to.”
Enlightening.
This is Lou Dobbs style. He has become a one man crusade against China’s rising economic influence, illegal immigration and outsourcing of American jobs. He has very similair to Bill O’reily in that respect. Having had a job that required me to wach Lou Dobbs all the time I noticed that he is horribly biased on a number of issues. His ‘reporting’ on the softwood lumber dispute was horribly slanted. I think he gets less attention than Bill O’Reily becaus he leans a little, only a little more left and because he works for CNN
Come to think of it even though his views are loathsome. How do you draw a line and endorse the activist press?
I mean either journalists should stay out of opinions and report their issues as they are or they shouldn’t. Isn’t a dangerous line to be okay with the activist press only if you Shotgun are ok with what they are advocating?
Sorry:
What I mean by an activist press is a press that doesn’t just report on the news of the day, but makes a concerted effort to bring to attention issues of public interest. This means the press doesn’t see its job as just reporting the facts of a story once and letting it go on its way, but it follows through if the public is interested in the story and seems to want futher investigation.
I guess I mean activist as in “active” rather than judgmental and argumentative. It’s a fine line between then two, and I think Lou Dobbs has crossed it. It’s certainly one thing to have a story on illegal immigration every night and to have Lou Dobbs COMMENT on illegal immigration every night.
The work you’re looking for instead of activist champ is, um …. good or compotent or not sucky.
And we all want that.