Lou Dobbs just went back to the dark side

The beginning of his show tonight on CNN, and the on-screen graphic behind him said, in all caps, WMD IN IRAQ.

No question mark. WMD IN IRAQ. That's what the great unwashed masses see. No matter how much nuance Lou puts into his words, that's what the people saw. WMD IN IRAQ.

Absolutely disgusting and shameful. I am completely livid. Talk about "journalistic malpractice"!

...and Dobbs may not have that much control over it.

Take a deep breath and start thinking about what you actually HEARD as opposed to what you SAW.

I think this is yet another in a long string of crap and most people - including Bush's base - knows it. Anyone in anyway even remotely related to the military knows it very, very well, not to mention active duty personnel.

... at least till I changed over to the BBC in disgust. And there's no doubt that CNN's screen has become more cluttered than the Amazon homepage.

But they put the words on the screen, in the big behind-the-anchor position, with no qualification. Everyone who wasn't paying attention just saw the magic words, WMD IN IRAQ, and that's the impression they'll get.

Lou certainly has the power (I hope) to choose the opening words for his show, and he didn't say anything like "the U.S. military is claiming that some preliminary tests have shown the possible presence of sarin nerve agent."

http://www.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0405/17/ldt.00.html
DOBBS: Good evening.

Tonight, American troops have found what appears to be nerve gas in Iraq and insurgents have killed a top Iraqi government official. The soldiers found sarin gas in an artillery shell that exploded while bomb disposal experts were diffusing it. It could be the first evidence that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction before the United States overthrew his regime.

... JAMIE MCINTYRE, CNN MILITARY AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT: ... Meanwhile, another roadside bomb that was being diffused exploded over the weekend providing more evidence that Iraq once had weapons of mass destruction. Five soldiers part of a bomb disposal team were sickened suffering nausea and eye irritation when it turned out the artillery shell used in the bomb tested positive for sarin nerve gas.

Damn, I wish I hadn't looked at the transcript. Now I'm just getting angrier.

Spreading it out, preventing its concentration in one place? Surely they meant "defuse."

The relevant question, Mr. Dobbs, is did they have WMD (and not just some left-over artillery shells) when our (p)Resident bravely decided to sacrifice so many lives for the sake of a photo-op?

brief mention of sarin gas before segment on assassination in Iraq today. Show was mostly brown vs Education.

Most are reporting straight up - leftover shell from the 80's.

a couple of days in a room with the wall street journal and maybe he'll recover.

we don't know that he personally types in his on-screen graphics...

He was also behaving as if he was in the company of a deity with that criminal kissinger.

but it was quickly taken off and replaced with a generic "fight for iraq" banner, or "font" as it's called in tv.

that was a HORRIBLE mistake... might have been done by a writer and overlooked. not sure. but more than likely, lou was unaware it was in there like that. anchors rarely know what font is going up.

I don't watch his show regularly, but when I have, I've noticed him being sexist - giving the man the tough questions, the woman got the easy questions.

And generally, favoring Bush* & Co.

Blame the graphics manager.

Meanwhile CNN has gone on to hype hurricanes that aren't even here yet.

The WMD story fizzled.

Did Dobbs recan, or correct, or ANYTHING once the new evidence came to light?

This is much of the reason Fox News Viewers still believe they have discovered WMDs in Iraq: WMD'S FOUND! Big Letters!!! Big Story!!! It's all the rage!!!!

But when the second opinion rolls around, the story gets maybe a footnote in the crawl, if that. People remember the Big News that took up most of yesterday's newscast, and missed the retraction, probably by design.

I'm firmly of the mind that any correction or retraction should have equal weight to the original news story. Of course, do one does that, which is all the more reason it should be done.