Earlier today Fox Business Channel announced that it's hiring former CNN talker Lou Dobbs to host a new program on its schedule. Once again Fox has demonstrated that it is alone among cable networks in being willing to routinely offer conservative opinion.
Dobbs left CNN last year after CNN president Jonathan Klein gave him an ultimatum: "Mr. Dobbs could vent his opinions on radio and anchor an objective newscast on television, or he could leave CNN."
Ironically, CNN's move was an apparent attempt to show that it was politically unbiased, and yet the cable channel had forced Dobbs out for his conservative political views - most notably his views on illegal immigration. None of his decidedly un-conservative opinions garnered even a mention by CNN or other journalists reporting on his ouster.
It wasn't Dobbs's support for a liberal health care agenda - ObamaCare was still being bitterly debated by the nation at the time, remember - or his extreme distaste for free trade and outsourcing that earned him CNN's ire.
Is Dobbs "a conservative"? Most would probably say he is. But he certainly holds left-of-center views - controversial ones, at that. But those views didn't seem to bother CNN. His right-of-center views on immigration were by far the most cited examples of views that were "polluting the CNN brand," as one "TV insider" put it at the time.
FBN, on the other hand, apparently has no problem with any of his views. TV Newser reported today:
Beginning early next year Dobbs will host his own daily program at time that has not yet been determined. Says Dobbs in a statement, “I’m excited and feel privileged to join the great team that Rupert Murdoch, Roger Ailes and Neil Cavuto have created, and I can’t wait to make whatever contribution I can to Fox Business.”
A few days after his CNN leave, Fox News host Bill O’Reilly offered Dobbs a “semi-regular” contributor role on “The O’Reilly Factor.” There was also speculation that he would run for office.
The LA Times reports Dobbs will continue to host his daily radio show in addition to his FBN program.
