America's Voice Blog

Posted 10/23/09 at 12:09pm

Protest Over Lou Dobbs Escalates As Latino In America Airs, Dobbs Lashes Out

In the past few weeks, we’ve been calling for CNN to drop their controversial, anti-immigrant “news show,” Lou Dobbs Tonight, along with organizations across the country.

In anticipation of  CNN’s highly-publicized “Latino in America” series, many of these groups were also eager to see what steps, if any, CNN would take to address their own involvement in the difficulty of being Latino in America. On the eve of the “Latino in America” premier, CNN was protested by the very same demographic it was supposed to entice (national protests were organized by our friends at BastaDobbs.com and were covered by La Macha of Vivir Latino).

Many were dismayed. According to the New York Times:

One of the activists featured in the documentary said on Wednesday she tried to bring up what she called Mr. Dobbs’s “hatred” on one of the channel’s news programs, but that her remarks were cut from the interview.

The activist, Isabel Garcia, also said, according to the same NY Times piece, that “CNN was ‘promoting lies and hate about our community’ by broadcasting Mr. Dobbs’s program.”

But that comment, along with several others that she made about Dobbs, never made it on air.

As the Lou Dobbs/CNN debate steadily escalates, so too does the discontent. Only a few weeks ago, rumor had it that Dobbs was being courted by the chairman of Fox News, and Ted Turner himself said that if he were running CNN, Lou Dobbs would have been fired by now.

But now it’s not clear if Dobbs will be welcome at Fox Business, as Andrea Nill reports at Think Progress. Dobbs is clearly on the defensive, according to Nill in “Lou Dobbs Rips Stossel: A ‘Self Important Ass’ With ‘Myopic Idiocy’":

Yesterday on his radio show, Lou Dobbs slammed Fox Business News correspondent John Stossel for recently denouncing Dobbs’ “rants about immigrants wrecking America.”  Dobbs, who claims to love immigrants, ripped Stossel’s “myopic idiocy” and described Beck, who conducted the interview with Stossel, as a “rodeo clown.”

So what exactly is it about their continued Dobbs hypocrisy does CNN think Latinos -- and all of us -- in America can’t see?

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