Lou Dobbs is the former CNN host of "Lou Dobbs Tonight", generating big money for Time Warner Inc. for decades. He is currently the host of a new television show of the same name on Rupert Murdoch's Fox Business Network. No doubt trying to hold on to his reign as a very influential spokesperson for the anti-immigrant movement. Dobbs is acclaimed by former CNN president Jonathan Klein for his "fearless reporting and commentary", but independent journalist Isabel Macdonald has uncovered hidden truths that tell otherwise. She reveals in her October 2010 article, "Lou Dobbs, American Hypocrite", how Dobb's is yet another affluent white American reliant on the labour of poor racialized people with no or precarious status. Turns out Dobbs' recurring public rants condemning "illegal" employers, advocating an enforcement-first approach to those hiring "ïllegal" people, was just a trade off for his reported $6 million per year salary. Underneath it all, his reliance on "low cost" "undocumented" workers makes good for the upkeep of his family's lavish lifestyle.
In this interview Macdonald looks deeper into: the dangers of misinforming the public; how categorizing people as un/documented, victimizes them; the purpose of corporate-led media's scapegoating poor immigrants, including how Dobb's solely right wing point of view helps build and consolidate a movement premised to scapegoat and deny rights to immigrants; and the protest campaign led by the Latin American community.
Isabel Macdonald is a freelance journalist and the former communications director of the media watch group FAIR (Fairness & Accuracy In Reporting). Her work has been published by The Nation magazine, the Guardian and the Toronto Star, amongst other publications.
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