Why CNN’s Lou Dobbs Doesn’t Watch Fox Business Network

Lou Dobbs Tonight Moving Into 7 p.m. Time Slot Monday

By Marisa Guthrie -- Broadcasting & Cable, 11/5/2007 12:01:00 AM

Lou Dobbs' critics call him myopic and an economic isolationist. He calls himself an independent populist, and he’s proud of it.

Dobbs, 62, uses his CNN show, Lou Dobbs Tonight, to rail against illegal immigration, corporate special interests’ hijacking of the political process and the Bush administration’s “shameful” lack of leadership. His favorite target of the moment: New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer (whom Dobbs calls “Prince Eliot”) and his plan to issue drivers’ licenses to illegal immigrants.

CNN viewers seem to like Dobbs’ brand of populist rhetoric. Lou Dobbs Tonight is the second-most-popular show on the network after Larry King Live.

Beginning Monday, when The Situation Room with Wolf Blitzer expands to three consecutive hours, Dobbs' 6 p.m. show moves into its new 7 p.m. slot.

Dobbs has his work cut out for him at 7 p.m. He’ll be up against Fox News’ Studio B with Shepard Smith, which averaged 1.29 million viewers (306,000 of them in news’ target demographic of 25- to 54-year-olds) for the month of October. Lou Dobbs Tonight averaged 849,000 viewers (222,000 in the demo) for the same period, according to Nielsen Media Research.

Dobbs spoke recently with B&C’s Marisa Guthrie about the futility of the presidential debates, the state of the American media and why he doesn't watch Fox Business Network.

Q: Who do you like in the 2008 election?

A: I’m an independent populist and none of the candidates are speaking to the issues with sincerity and conviction that are most important to me.

Q: Do you vote?

A: I always vote. But I’m a registered Independent and I make a decision on the candidates as to who is closest to the values that I think define this nation, which are individual liberty and equality of rights and opportunity. I do my very best to discern that, but I’ll tell you that both political parties are simply opposite wings of the same bird and they make it very difficult because both political parties are beholden to the same interests.

Q: Do you think the media has lost its independence? Is there an ideological sameness to the American media?

A: Oh yes, absolutely. The sameness, however, is quite different if you’re on Fox [News Channel] or if you’re reading The New York Times. But the preponderance of the view is one of orthodoxy. The national mainstream media is part of an orthodoxy that is hidebound and simply reflexive to the wishes of the dominant political influences, which are corporate America and socio-ethnocentric interest groups.

Q: Do you think we reflexively shout down anyone with a dissenting or unpopular view?

A: The fact is that we have a nation that is desperate for leadership and we have a national news media that is simply going along with its collective jaw slack and with bovine eyes swallowing corporate America, and socio-ethnocentric interest in whatever direction they would have them go is shameful. So to that degree, I think the national news media has lost its ability for critical judgment, and the broad apathy among the American people has to be thrown off and action and engagement taken by the people.

Q: I was surprised to read recently that the average American carries $8,000 in credit-card debt. Do you think we’re anesthetizing ourselves with flat-screen TVs and iPods?

A: We have to take individual responsibility. Wake up, folks: You cannot continue to be a runaway consumer society. You have to take responsibility for your debts. You have to take responsibility for the way you live. There’s more to life than being a consumer. There’s more to life than trinkets and toys.

Q: Do you think we’ve collectively become shallow?

A: There’s no question we have become shallow. Our national media has become shallow.

Q: What about business media? There’s a lot more of it now with the launch of Fox Business Network. You have considerable experience in that milieu with CNNfn …

A: I left business reporting many years ago. One reason why I did so is that I believe there are far more important issues than commerce and finance in this country. So I really pay very little attention to business reporting these days.

Q: Have you watched Fox Business?

A: No. Have you?

Q: Yes.

A: Would you if it weren’t your job?

Q: So what do you watch?

A: I watch our own network and the evening newscasts I watch haphazardly.

Q: I know you don’t like any of the candidates. But do you think voters learn anything useful about the candidates through the debates?

A: I think they’re instructive as to what [the candidates] don’t know and as to what they want to project themselves as. Do I think it’s worthwhile for anyone to sit there and listen to all of these candidates in both political parties give one-dimensional answers to highly predictable and packaged questions? No, I don’t.

Q: So you don’t think the debates bring much to bear on the political process?

A: It’s part of the process. But that process has brought us in the last presidential election two people who were from families of privilege, both graduates of Yale and members of Skull and Bones, as the best contenders for the presidency from among a population of 300 million people. That’s utter, utter madness.