CNNs Dobbs Continues to
Ignore Growth in Auto Industry
Anchor blames free trade for foreign
dominance, but doesnt point to the job creation that results.
By Ken Shepherd
Business & Media Institute
May 18, 2006
Japanese automaker Honda recently announced that it
plans to open another auto plant in the Midwest that will create
1,500 jobs [1].
The announcement is the latest among international car companies
expanding manufacturing operations on American soil. But the good
news escaped the notice of the nightly business program Lou Dobbs
Tonight, which has been warning about the alleged decline in the
U.S. auto industry.
Dobbs has been bearish in general on American
manufacturing jobs. On his April 11, for example, he bemoaned the
loss of three million manufacturing jobs when debating talk show
host Mark Simone about the health of the American economy under
President Bush.
On February 1, Dobbs angrily complained about being
labeled an isolationist by supporters of free trade. We've lost
millions of manufacturing jobs, he insisted, griping that anyone
who does not accept that policy is [labeled] a protectionist.
Yet while the CNN host has repeatedly focused on
layoffs and plant closures, particularly among Detroit automakers
like Ford and General Motors, his program has all but ignored job
creation by Honda, Toyota, and other foreign-owned companies
operating in the United States.
Perhaps, the closest Dobbs came to acknowledging the
economic benefits of foreign auto makers was on January 23. A search
of Nexis has found no stories on Dobbss program about job growth in
manufacturing in foreign-based companies in the last six months.
The January 23 included three brief reports about how
middle class families and communities all across the country will
be hit by Ford plant closings. Then Dobbs blamed what he considered
Ford Motors corporate greed noting that a Japanese CEO earns about
a fifth the average American CEOs pay and that Japanese car
companies are profitable and growing.
Two days later on Lou Dobbs Tonight, CNN reporter
Bill Tucker blamed free trade for profitable Japanese automakers,
while downplaying the economic benefit from the jobs they produce in
the United States.
The United States has failed to protect its auto
industry, Tucker complained, noting that General Motors once owned
better than 40 percent of the American auto market in 1980 but
today commands just 26 percent of the domestic market. Tucker
added that free, unfettered access by foreign automakers to our
market has turned out to be a good idea horribly executed.
But Detroits problem is not dirt cheap labor from
competitors overseas nor an aversion of the auto industry to
union-friendly states.
BusinessWeek [2]
in February noted that nonunionized American employees in the South
at auto plants for Toyota, Honda, and Mercedes earn almost as much
as union labor farther north. Most of these operations, the
Business & Media Institute [3]
reported in January, are in non-right-to-work states.
Additionally, while General Motors and Ford lost money
at home last year, their overseas operations, which also compete
with companies like Toyota, have proven profitable.
The Business & Media Institute has
previously documented [4]
the medias confusion of troubles in Detroit for a weak auto
industry as a whole.