Lou Dobbs on Andersen


June 21, 2002


MIKE PESCA: The trial of accounting firm Arthur Andersen ended in a guilty verdict last Saturday. We at On the Media have been watching the coverage of the Andersen trial, specifically the coverage provided by CNN's Lou Dobbs --and we're not the only ones. The Wall Street Journal, New York Times and USA Today have all noted that Dobbs has been vocal in his belief that the Justice Department committed an injustice by even bringing charges in the case. When defeated Andersen attorney Rusty Hardin appeared with Dobbs this week, the interview took on the tone of a wake.

LOU DOBBS: For those who don't know, Judge Harmon was trying to conduct, in her words at one point, a lawsuit. You were trying to conduct I believe as she put it, "a circus." You said that your client wasn't receiving a fair trial. We'll let the facts present themselves and the-- and the law work its mysterious ways as usual. Rusty Hardin, thank you very much for taking the time to be here. I know this is a difficult moment for you.

RUSTY HARDIN: It is. You like to have your moment of humbleness to be on a smaller scale, but-- I appreciate it.

LOU DOBBS: 26,000 and some people being humbled is quite a dimension.

MIKE PESCA: Lou Dobbs is kind enough to come on our show and talk about his coverage of the trial. Welcome to OTM.

LOU DOBBS: Thank you, Mike.

MIKE PESCA: So the verdict took 10 days and was decided on not reams of shredded documents but a single lawyer's note. Do you take this as any kind of vindication of your point of view all along?

LOU DOBBS: Well Andersen was killed as a firm on March 14th when they were indicted, and if you read or have heard my commentaries you will see throughout I have said the outcome of this trial is absolutely irrelevant! This company is dead. And the Justice Department killed it. Period.

MIKE PESCA:Do you think that your opinion, that opinion that we heard just there, which were labeled as commentaries at the end of your program made their way into the news portion of Moneyline which is the bulk of the program?

LOU DOBBS: Oh, I think that there's no way that it could not, because-- we're talking with people who are victims of this gross abuse of power; we're talking with people who concur with that view -- so certainly.

MIKE PESCA:Okay. So that's a little bit of a different structure than a newspaper, say the Wall Street Journal, where their editorial page agreed with you up and down the line that Andersen shouldn't have been prosecuted, but on their news pages they play it much more straight. Is that just something you have to live with as a function of the form that you're dealing with or is this a calculation that you made?

LOU DOBBS: Well I, I'm not sure what you mean by that, Mike. The, the Wall Street Journal makes a determination about what it will report and we reported the story precisely as the reporter found the facts.

MIKE PESCA:What I'm speaking of is I would see Peter Viles reporting, and that would be reporting that was not of a type different from what Kurt Eichenwald would report in the Times or what they would report in the Wall Street Journal.

LOU DOBBS: Right.

MIKE PESCA: But then they'd come back to the studio, and you would question Peter Veils, and it came through as you said before -- it couldn't help but coming through -- some of the questions that Rusty Hardin were raising were some of the exact same questions you were raising. It definitely came out that you were shocked at the number of rulings that Rusty Hardin won.

LOU DOBBS: Well let me ask you this, Mike -- are you shocked by the fact that this judge sustained 96 percent of the prosecution's objections?

MIKE PESCA:My point there is I only know that it was the 96 percent objection rate because you raised it again and again on your program, so when you would read accounts of this in the Journal or the Times, that fact wasn't emphasized. On your show it was.

LOU DOBBS: I don't know that we emphasized it, but the fact is we did illuminate it, and we illuminated the fact that this judge gave a remarkable, as she put it "terrifying" instructions to this jury on matters of law that will be studied for, I assure you, years to come!

MIKE PESCA: Then why is it at the end of the show you often give your opinions--

LOU DOBBS: Right.

MIKE PESCA: -- and on the screen comes the label: Commentary. Why is that commentary and the rest of it not?

LOU DOBBS:Because there I am commenting directly! In the other instances I'm doing what any other journalist would do -- is probing both our reporters and our guests to elucidate and to illuminate issues.

MIKE PESCA:Let me ask you a question about the coverage of your coverage -- cause there were New York Times and Wall Street Journal articles about it. You wrote an Op-Ed in the Wall Street Journal--

LOU DOBBS: Right.

MIKE PESCA: -- defending your coverage -- why do you think that on this issue and no prior issue that coverage occurred? Were you more vocal? Was it that you were more out of step with conventional wisdom?

LOU DOBBS: Oh, I, I think that there is no question that in this case the national news media chose to simply follow almost guppy-like the offerings from the Justice Department. Why? I don't know! The Wall Street Journal did not. A number of other news organizations did not. And certainly we did not.

MIKE PESCA:Well - and I'm not saying I agree with Justice, but I could see where they're coming from - where what will stop Andersen from breaking the rules -- cause it happened in Sunbeam, it happened in Waste Management and finally they say -- anything else and we're bringing down the hammer.

LOU DOBBS: Do you really believe that?

MIKE PESCA: I don't know if I really believe that. [LAUGHS] But I, I-- [LAUGHTER] I don't know that I have to, you know?

LOU DOBBS: Well you gotta believe it if you're gonna say it!

MIKE PESCA: I just have to present what Justice's thinking is! And then I have to present an opinion like yours and put them both out there. It's just putting yourself in the middle of it that's-- more Fox Newschannel-y. [LAUGHS]

LOU DOBBS: Well let me tell you why I put myself in the middle of it -- and it isn't Fox Newschannel because I've been giving commentary for a very long time.

MIKE PESCA: I know that.

LOU DOBBS:If somebody else that started on this, I would never have raised my voice. But to watch this process go forward and no one say a word -- it was unbelievable to me!

MIKE PESCA: It drove you crazy.

LOU DOBBS: It's still -- it's still utterly maddening!

MIKE PESCA: All right, Lou I want to thank you very much for your time.

LOU DOBBS: You bet, Mike.

MIKE PESCA: Lou Dobbs is the host of Lou Dobbs Moneyline on CNN.