PressEthic

This week's episode of On The Media, the NPR show about the press, included a letter from a listener named Julie Pfieffer about a previous episode that contained an interview with CNN host Lou Dobbs. The letter essentially provided one of the most rational arguments about Al-Jazeera English and its failure to pick up any cable distributors.

"Am I the only one who noticed the extreme irony of the juxtaposition of two segments aired in today's episode? First you played a largely respectful interview with Lou Dobbs, whose inflammatory and populist broadcasts are attracting an ever widening audience as they air on one of the most ubiquitous cable TV channels in the United States. Immediately thereafter, you featured the introduction of cable channel Al Jazeera English, focusing for nearly the entire piece on the fact that Al Jazeera Arabic's occasionally inflammatory and populist broadcasts have kept the new channel from receiving a single cable distribution agreement in the United States.

If the U.S. public can be trusted to watch Lou Dobbs and his nativist hate speech, why can't we see Al Jazeera English, which is far less polemical?"

The Dobbs segment, called "Borderline Journalism," first aired on November 17. On The Media host Bob Garfield took Dobbs to task ("while maintaining the civility and fairness that are the hallmarks of public radio," according to the show's website). Garfield asked Dobbs about how his inexorable alarmist invectives on immigration are interpreted by the audience.

Garfield: Let's talk for a moment about illegal immigration, which I believe you've discussed once or twice or thirty trillion times on your [LAUGHS] program. You -

Dobbs: "Relentlessly" is what my critics like to use. I like to say I report on the issue thoroughly and in an ongoing fashion.

Garfield: But let's just say that your conclusions about illegal immigration -

Dobbs: Uh-huh.

Garfield: - are based on a cool analysis of the facts.

Dobbs: Right.

Garfield: But do you not see how the constant hammering of that kind of rhetoric fans flames of less cool-headed analysis, of jingoism and racism and hysteria? Don't you have some responsibility for how your message is being translated?

Dobbs: Oh, I think I have a great responsibility for how my skills of communication and how my use of language is perceived and received by my audience. I have no responsibility for those who would try to ignore my actual statements and twist those words in order to create a polemical argument.

Garfield: But when you talk about an invasion, why shouldn't I see this as just a 21st century version of, you know, fear of the Irish or of yellow peril or any of the other such -

Dobbs: Because -

Garfield: - scourges that were –

Dobbs: Because I think -

Garfield: - supposed to destroy our society?

Dobbs: The truth is that I have never made a racist statement in my life. Period. I have never made a jingoistic statement, a nativist statement. And, by the way, think about something. You used historical figures, no matter how nefarious, in some instances. Think about what nativism means in the 21st century, Bob. We are the most racially and ethnically diverse society on the face of the earth. And, by the way, I'm not an immigration restrictionist, it may stun you to learn, if you're reading clippings from some of those who torture and twist things to their own advantage politically.

In that exchange, Dobbs clearly stated that his own approval of his political opinions makes him eligible for a prime time platform.

The same episode features a segment about Al Jazeera English that is equally telling. On The Media did a rush job, splicing together two past interviews by Bob Garfield. In one, he said to an expert on Arab media, "Al Jazeera Arabic has been, if not necessarily an advocate of Islamism and Jihadism, or even necessarily being sympathetic to those causes, it's certainly been hospitable to rhetoric about them and has had all sorts of accompanying very inflammatory images."

There's that word again, inflammatory. True, Garfield obviously disdains Dobbs' style as much as Al Jazeera's. But the show gave a much more fair treatment to Dobbs than the new English network. As Pfieffer put it, Al Jazeera deserves to be discussed with the same amount of crediblity (and airplay) as Lou Dobbs. Too bad the people at On The Media didn't bother to so themselves.