Now that former CNN host Lou Dobbs has been freed of his duties with his former network, he has been making the rounds on other networks - Fox News "The O'Reilly Factor," Comedy Central's "The Daily Show" and now with his long-time rival's show CNBC's "The Kudlow Report." 

One of the issues debated among a panel consisting of Dobbs, host Larry Kudlow, former Clinton Secretary of Labor Robert Reich and CNBC CME Group reporter Rick Santelli on Nov. 19 was the issue of wage stagnation - which Dobbs blamed on outsourcing, immigration policy and technological advancement.

"I believe that the issue of unemployment in this country and job creation fundamentally will have to be taken on as a matter of government policy," Dobbs said. "It will also have to be taken on as a matter of business leadership. As to the idea that wages have been stagnant in this country for 35 year, point of fact, we have to understand what the causes are."

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NBC's Matt Lauer, on Tuesday's Today show, actually asked Lou Dobbs, formerly of CNN, if he and the network parted ways because he was "too conservative" and if CNN was okay with Dobbs' push for immigration reform when he was attacking George W. Bush but wasn't happy when Dobbs started slamming the Obama administration on the issue, as he queried the former CNN host, "You got much less kickback from CNN than when you started to speak out about the policies of Barack Obama. So, was this an issue that CNN wants to appear neutral but maintain a more liberal stance?" [MP3 audio available here]

For his part Dobbs claimed the home of the very liberal Rick Sanchez "made it very clear, they wanted the network to go middle of the road and to be very neutral."

The following is the full transcript of the entire segment as it was aired on the November 17, Today show:

Former CNN host Lou Dobbs stuck to his guns when questions were raised if he was forced out at CNN in an interview with Fox News Channel's Bill O'Reilly.

However, Dobbs did make one distinction - how his detractors decided to pile on when he was critical of President Barack Obama instead of former President George W. Bush. He elaborated on this on Fox News Channel's Nov. 16 "The O'Reilly Factor."

"I discerned more of a difference between then, which was under the Bush administration, whom I was criticizing and now when it is the Obama administration and an entirely different tone was taken, not so much in the case of CNN management certainly, because there is no - my contract is very explicit. I have absolute editorial control. What I reported is what I chose to report."

Lou Dobbs left CNN after years of tensions between him and the network's brass, who consistently objected to his outspoken, often controversial reports. But the issues that seem to have annoyed CNN execs most were ones on which Dobbs took a conservative stance.

The New York Times reported Wednesday that CNN President Jonathan Klein offered Dobbs an ultimatum a few months ago: "Mr. Dobbs could vent his opinions on radio and anchor an objective newscast on television, or he could leave CNN." Klein reportedly complained about Dobbs's reporting on the Birther movement over the summer, and his outspoken opposition to illegal immigration.

According to the New York Post, one "TV insider" said Dobbs was "polluting the CNN brand" of purported political objectivity. Klein issued a statement saying Dobbs had decided to "carry the banner of advocacy journalism elsewhere."

As noted earlier today (at NewsBusters; at BizzyBlog), yesterday's resignation from CNN by Lou Dobbs was his second during a storied career there. The first was at least partially driven by clear tensions between Dobbs and CNN head Rick Kaplan, a longtime friend of former president Bill Clinton who arrived at the network in 1997.

That Kaplan was driven to protect Clinton, and to risk journalistic integrity while doing so, is virtually beyond dispute. In 1997, as the Wall Street Journal's Dorothy Rabinowitz noted in a 1999 op-ed whose primary purpose was to comment the significance of "the demolition of CNN and Time's story charging that U.S. forces used the lethal gas sarin to attack American defectors in Laos," U.S. News reported that Kaplan "issued a warning to CNN journalists to limit the use of words like 'scandal' in relation to stories on the president's fund-raising ventures."

So you can imagine how beside himself Kaplan must have been when Dobbs, then the host of a business and finance show, went after the Chinese nuclear espionage story in 1999 while his other CNN colleagues and the Big 3 networks were attempting to downplay and ignore it. Brent Baker's CyberAlert from March 12 of that year has the details:

Newsweek senior editor Jerry Adler on Thursday posted a bizarre poem on the publication’s website, mocking Lou Dobbs for leaving CNN and insinuating that the cable anchor might be crazy: "So wily Lou has picked the locks That kept him in his padded box And tiptoed off, in just his socks." [Punctuation original to the poem.]

Adler, whose poem reads like a cross between Dr. Seuss and Calvin Trillin, also trashed Dobbs and his viewers for opposing illegal immigration: "A network just for frat-boy jocks? Where aliens are put in stocks And viewers pelt them with big rocks Before each half-time show?" [Emphasis added.] He concluded by speculating on Dobbs’ future: "Could it be UPN, or Cox? They’d have to open up Fort Knox We know Lou’s crazy, like a Fox."

In addition to composing poetry, Adler also famously made this pronouncement about the environment on December 31, 1990: "It's a morbid observation, but if everyone on Earth just stopped breathing for an hour, the greenhouse effect would no longer be a problem."

While Lou Dobbs has always been an independent populist with some conservative bearings on certain issues -- illegal immigration chief among them -- conservatives should heed the old Reagan maxim when it comes to the former CNNer's populist conservatism: Trust, but verify.

After all, back in December 2006, fresh after the election which saw the return of Democratic control to the House of Representatives, Dobbs voiced support for Democratic universal health care proposals on a CNN special entitled "War on the Middle Class":

[T]his country has a responsibility to all the people in this room and Americans, all but the very poor and the very rich, are the ones being hammered because there is no program for the middle-class.

Julia Seymour documented the story at the time over at the Business & Media Institute Web site. You can find the full story below the page break:

Lou Dobbs has resigned from CNN, and his final show aired last night. The departure is reportedly on amicable terms.

That said, this is a good time to recall that Dobbs and his employer were at very visible loggerheads a decade ago. In fact, yesterday's move by Dobbs is not his first resignation from the network. Here is Brent Baker's June 9, 1999 CyberAlert item describing what happened:

Lou Dobbs gone from CNN. Forced out by CNN President Rick Kaplan, or just frustrated by him? In a surprise announcement at the end of Tuesday’s The World Today, anchor Jim Moret informed viewers:

"And finally tonight, farewell to a colleague. Lou Dobbs, President of CNNfn and anchor of Moneyline, is resigning to launch a new Internet venture. Dobbs said he is ‘grateful to Ted Turner and CNN News Group Chairman Tom Johnson for the opportunity to have helped build CNN and cnn.com into a first-class television news and interactive institution.’ Lou Dobbs had been with CNN since its inception 19 years ago. He will start up space.com, a Web site for news, entertainment and educational content about space."

No mention of Kaplan and an on-air dispute the two had a couple of weeks ago about whether to carry live a Clinton speech may explain why. As Clay Waters of Bridge News first informed me, the May 25 Page Six column in the New York Post revealed:

Leave it to that bastion of grace and class that waxes poetically on a nightly basis about the wrongdoings of Republicans or conservatives ad nauseum known as MSNBC host Keith Olbermann to do Lou Dobbs resignation from CNN up just right.

Olbermann on his Nov. 11 "Countdown" broadcast honored Dobbs 30-year CNN career by naming him his "third worst person in the world."

"The bronze to Lou Dobbs, who tonight, as of tonight, has just quit his CNN show," Olbermann said.

Although it isn't quite clear why Olbermann decided to bestow that honor upon Dobbs, if for no other reason than for his decision to resign, Olbermann cherry-picked portions of Dobbs resignation speech from the Nov. 11 broadcast of "Lou Dobbs Tonight" and even ad-libbed in his comments (actual transcript of Dobbs here).

Confirmed: Lou Dobbs announced his resignation from CNN on his Nov. 11 broadcast. Transcription at bottom.

Has Lou Dobbs been forced out at CNN by the left-wing attack machine and other liberal forces? Quite possibly.

According to New York Times reporters Brian Stelter and Bill Carter, CNN's Lou Dobbs will announce his resignation from CNN on his Nov. 11 show.

"Lou Dobbs, the longtime CNN anchor whose anti-immigration views made him a TV lightning rod, plans to announce Wednesday that he is leaving the network, two network employees said," Stelter and Carter wrote. "A CNN executive confirmed that Mr. Dobbs will announce his resignation plans on his 7 p.m. program. His resignation is effective immediately; tonight's program will be his last on CNN. His contract was not set to expire until the end of 2011."

Some of the mainstream media intelligentsia following the Fort Hood, Texas massacre have cautioned people to reserve judgment about the suspect Major Nidal Malik Hasan and have bypassed many key details in order to live up to what could be construed as a politically correct standard. CNN's Lou Dobbs isn't one of them.

Dobbs, on his Nov. 10 radio program, didn't reserve judgment and criticized President Barack Obama for telling people to do so in a speech following the tragic event. Dobbs played a clip from the speech Obama gave last week in which he warned, "We don't know all the answers yet and I would caution against jumping to conclusions until we have all the facts."

"Isn't that remarkable, telling the American people not to jump to any conclusions?" Dobbs said. "Not to speculate, not to be curious about what is happening to our men and women, who should be the center of all of our attention and concern and care. Let's compare that statement by our president to what he said at the end of a press conference about health care shortly after the arrest of Professor Henry Louis Gates, his good friend."

Recently a lot of hubbub had been made about the possibility that the peaceful tea party protests and some conservative voices would stir up emotions that could lead to violence. Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi was even one of those sounding that alarm.

But what has gone unsaid by those same voices has been the possibility of violence against those who might take a position antithetical to that of the left.

Case in point: CNN's Lou Dobbs. Dobbs, who has been the target of a smear campaign by the left-wing noise machine, told his radio audience on Oct. 26 that his home had been shot at three weeks earlier. (Unabbreviated audio available here)

Monday’s Lou Dobbs Tonight on CNN gave attention to filmmaker Phelim McAleer – whose film Not Evil, Just Wrong premieres this Sunday and challenges Al Gore’s Inconvenient Truth – in the aftermath of his recent attempt to get Gore to respond to the British High Court ruling that there are nine factual errors in An Inconvenient Truth. But McAleer’s microphone was cut off as he tried to get Gore to answer for some of these inaccuracies and whether the former Vice President was trying to correct his mistakes. After a report by correspondent Casey Wian – who showed a clip of the exchange between McAleer and Gore, and who also mentioned some of the inaccurate points in An Inconvenient Truth about polar bears and Hurricane Katrina – Dobbs hosted a debate segment between McAleer and Fred Krupp of the Environmental Defense Fund.

McAleer pointed out that many of the environmental scientists pushing global warming theory were pushing global cooling theory decades earlier: "And the same environmentalists who are now saying it is warming, 20 and 30 years ago were saying we're going to have an ice age. I'm old enough to be at school and I was told that we're going into a new ice age."

Is Fox News Channel president Roger Ailes about to score another big name personality for his fledgling off-spin business channel? According to The New York Times television and digital media reporter Brian Stelter, News Corp's (NASDAQ:NWS) Fox Business Network is considering adding CNN "Lou Dobbs Tonight" host Lou Dobbs to its lineup.

"The business channel is also keen on another administration critic, Lou Dobbs, who met for dinner with Mr. Ailes last month, according to two people with direct knowledge of the meeting," Stelter wrote in a piece for the Oct. 12 Times about the growing divide between Fox News and the Obama administration. "The shift for Fox News - the favorite network of the Bush administration, now the least favored one of the Obama administration - has financial implications for the News Corporation, especially given the network's status as a growth engine in a perilous time for media companies."

CNN’s Kitty Pilgrim followed the lead of ABC News in reporting the Obama administration’s attempt to use regulatory power to suppress criticism of its health care proposal on Wednesday’s Lou Dobbs Tonight. Pilgrim noted how “[health] insurers are angry because...the government Medicaid office instructed them to cease sending what it called misleading...information about the bill to clients.”

Anchor Lou Dobbs introduced the correspondent’s report 19 minutes in the 7 pm Eastern hour: “Lawmakers and some of this country’s insurers today [are] incensed about what they see as a White House attempt to control information about possible Medicare cuts. The White House yesterday, in fact, warned insurers and health care companies they could face legal action if they spread what the White House calls misinformation about the health care bill.”

“We're the only industrialized democracy that doesn't cover every citizen” and “that is immoral,” Mark Halperin, editor-at-large and senior political analyst for Time magazine where he oversees “The Page” blog, declared on CNN's Lou Dobbs Tonight in illustrating the prism through which journalists view the debate over the proper role of government in health care.

Halperin's contention occurred back on Thursday, August 6, but I'm just now catching up, following a vacation, thanks to a tip from Steve Allen of the Gentleman from Lickskillet comic strip, which had a liberal media bias theme a couple of weeks ago involving “Group Think” magazine.
 
When Dobbs challenged Halperin's premise -- “That's immoral?” -- the political director at ABC News for ten years until jumping to Time in 2007, affirmed: “Yes, to be a country this wealthy and be the only industrialized democracy that hasn't figured out how to cover everyone.”

Lou Dobbs - you can love him or hate, but sometimes he makes a point that will get your attention.

The CNN host of "Lou Dobbs Tonight" gave his evaluation of MSNBC "Countdown" host Keith Olbermann on his Aug. 11 radio show. According to Dobbs, Olbermann was a neophyte until MSNBC gave him a primetime show in 2003.

"First, I want to share with you something that just, I mean shocks me," Dobbs said. "Over at MSNBC, Keith Olbermann is their resident moron over there. He knows nothing about politics, nothing about economics. He has never covered politics until they put him in that chair and said, ‘Hey, you know, go try it out.' I mean, it's crazy. He's just - oh my gosh."

It today's "Who's Using Vitriol To Defend President Obama" segment, Lloyd Grove, the editor at large of the Daily Beast, is quite displeased with CNN's Lou Dobbs.

After the teaser to his article published Wednesday called Dobbs an "immigrant-hating, birther-supporting zealot," the former New York Daily News columnist claimed the CNN host has made a "Kafka-like metamorphosis from WASPy establishmentarian to angry-populist cockroach."

Nice imagery, yes?

In his piece titled "What Happened to the Real Lou?" Grove let Dobbs have it early and often:

Unless you've been asleep for the past couple of weeks, you're quite aware that CNN's Lou Dobbs has been taking a lot of heat for his reports concerning Barack Obama's birth certificate.

Never reluctant to stand up for himself, Dobbs on his radio program Tuesday took aim at those in the media who are "trying to silence their opponents and their competitors in the public marketplace of ideas," in particular MSNBC's Rachel Maddow who he referred to as a "teabagging queen."

What follows is a YouTube audio of some of his comments, along with a partial transcript:

There's no doubt about it. Celebrity is the media's top priority.

Michael Jackson's June 25 death overshadowed all other news for almost two weeks.

Nightly news programs on ABC, CBS and NBC featured at least one story each night about Jackson since his death. More than half of those broadcasts aired since June 25 lead with a story about Jackson. A Pew poll found cable news devoted 93 percent of its coverage to Jackson on June 25 and 26. The broadcast networks joined CNN, MSNBC and Fox News in airing Jackson's July 7 memorial from Los Angeles' Staples Center.

Despite a separate Pew poll that found 64 percent of people believe there was too much coverage of Jackson, the media continue to hit the story hard. CNN's Don Lemon even labeled critics of the coverage "elitist," and said, "Michael Jackson is an accidental civil rights leader, an accidental pioneer. He broke ground and barriers in so many different realms in artistry, in pictures, in movies, in music, you name it. So, no, I don't think it's overkill."