PressEthic

It's hard to identify the single most interesting part of the Lou Dobbs phenomenon. There's his transition from business reporter to anchorman, the conversion of his show from Moneyline to Lou Dobbs Tonight, and his ability to violate CNN's semantic policy and get away with it (like using the term, "war on Islamists"). But it is the way he has combined different formats of journalism and the cable news imitation of it that makes Lou Dobbs such a singular marvel. A column by Kurt Andersen in this week's New York magazine breaks down Dobbs' history at CNN and how he fits into the ratings war between Fox News, CNN, CNN Headline News, and MSNBC. Andersen points out, "how completely seamlessly he mingles actual news with opinion and straight-out tirade." CNN classifies his program as news, but Dobbs hardly lets a single story go by without the kind of brazen dogmatic commentary that made Bill O'Reilly famous. In that sense, he's added a little Fox flavor to the more traditional CNN style. Even more astounding, though, is his ability to hold on to advertisers while taking on a long list of corporations, as part of his opposition to free trade.

For instance, Dobbs has compiled a list of hundreds of U.S. companies, all implicitly boycottable, that are "sending American jobs overseas, or choosing to employ overseas labor, instead of American workers." The list, posted on CNN.com, includes Time Warner.

But, according to Andersen, he still hasn't scared away sponsors, especially when compared with other cable news fare, like Nancy Grace.

And someone familiar with CNN's ad-sales operations tells me that big corporate advertisers are very comfortable with Dobbs's program, his anti-free-market tilt not-withstanding - as opposed to "the tabloid shows," which tend to be a harder sell.

Dobbs himself terms his brand of programming "advocacy journalism." Yet he has none of the same problems as those on the political left who would identify themselves similarly. Any anti-free market progressive, for example, who listed companies to boycott on their website, would have a hard time getting a contract with CNN, or any other mainstream broadcaster, for that matter. Is it simply that Dobbs' particular brand of populist politics includes enough conservativism to keep him on the air?