More on Lou Dobbs on 60 Minutes

To see an excerpt of Lesley Stahl’s interview of Lou Dobbs on “60 Minutes” on May 6, along with a transcript of the interview (“Advocacy” Journalist? Lesley Stahl Interviews The Outspoken CNN Anchor), click here.  Not surprisingly, the interview generated many comments on the 60 Minutes’ website.

Think Progress (here) reports that

an article in the Spanish-language newspaper El Diario La Prensa notes that the National Association of Hispanic Journalists (NAHJ) has accepted Lou Dobbs as a national lifetime member. A lifetime membership costs $1,000; Dobbs donated $5,000. NAHJ president Rafael Olmeda tried to justify Dobbs’s membership:

“We cannot pretend that illegal immigration is not part of the story. Lou Dobbs, in my opinion, tells this story in an incomplete, not constructive, way. But he has the right to disagree with me,” reaffirmed Olmeda in writing after a 36-minute conversation on Friday afternoon. (trans.). . . . Last night, CBS’s 60 Minutes caught Dobbs in one of these lies. Following “a report on illegals carrying diseases into the U.S.,” his show reported that there were 7,000 cases of leprosy in the United States in the last three years. CBS found out that there were actually 7,000 cases in the past 30 years, and “nobody knows how many of those cases involve illegal immigrants.” When host Lesley Stahl confronted him on this error, Dobbs simply replied, “If we reported it, it’s a fact.”

Check out the Think Progress link above for a video clip of Stahl’s questioning of Dobbs on the leprosy data.

KJ