Latinos Achieve an Historic Departure From CNN

A journalist with CNN since its founding, Lou Dobbs was marked as inciting hatred against immigrants. Paradoxically, his wife is from Mexico.

It has become a large fight. On one side are 40 Hispanic groups; on the other, a veteran host, Harvard economist, and star of CNN.

In the end, Hispanic power triumphed and, although Dobbs said this week that he renounced his program to search for a more active political role in defense of his conservative ideals, what is certain is that the pressure cornered him.

“We are very confident that the defeat of Lou Dobbs is imminent,” said Roberto Lovato, cofounder of Presente.org, a national organization that coordinated the BastaDobbs.com campaign, which worked to get Dobbs fired from CNN (29 years of existence) once he made the fight against immigration his main cause and affirmed, for example, that one out of three prisoners in the U.S. is “an illegal alien.”

After 9/11

Dobbs, who competed with stars like Bill O’Reilly of the Fox News Channel, started to take an increasingly anti-immigrant slant after the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. He often suggested that immigration was a threat to the survival of the United States.

One of his pearls was: “The invasion of illegal immigrants puts the health of many Americans at risk. Highly contagious diseases are penetrating our borders, decades after they had disappeared from our country.”

Paradoxically, this 64 year old man is married to a Mexican-American.

Although his program, Lou Dobbs Tonight, focuses on illegal immigration above all, many activists considered his message to be prejudiced against Latinos in general, to the point that, last October, pro-immigrant groups coordinated by Presente.org protested in 19 American cities, asking CNN to retire the host, whom they accused of denigrating Hispanic immigrants.

The protests coincided with the first day the channel transmitted the ‘Latino in America’ series, a special program highlighting the contributions of Hispanics to the United States.

“Our message to CNN is clear: They cannot have it all. They can promote hate with Lou Dobbs or they can report true stories about the Latino community,” Isabel García pointed out in a news report. She is a civil and human rights lawyer in Arizona who appeared in ‘Latino in America’ and also participated in the campaign against Dobbs.

At the same time, CNN said in a press release that they had no commentary regarding the Latino community’s complaints because, on Tuesday, Dobbs affirmed on his program that the president of the channel, Jonathan Klein, had acceded to ‘liberate him’ from his contract, so he would “be able to look for new opportunities.”

From Finances to Opinion

Dobbs was the most experienced host on CNN. Since 1980, he was the financial journalist that stood out the most before putting a twist on his program, transforming it into an opinion program: It was the passing of Moneyline News Hour to Lou Dobbs Tonight.

Following the style of his competitors, Dobbs also provided a place for his most enduring critics to carry on debates in a harsh tone, like a famous meeting he had with Janet Murguía, president of the Hispanic organization, The National Council of La Raza, in February of 2008. “We will fight so that he has to answer for promoting a discourse of racial hatred,” warned Murguía on his program. “Or perhaps you want them to fire me?” responded Dobbs, later accusing her of having a lack of respect for the right to freedom of expression.

“It would not make me sad to see Lou Dobbs leave CNN,” said José E. Serrano, a New York congressman. “I think that CNN’s lower ratings during the hour of his program are not a coincidence: The majority of American don’t want to see hatred in their newspeople.”

“Lou Dobbs’ opinions and messages of hate directed at the Latino community have become an embarrassment for CNN,” emphasized Alex Nogales, executive director of the National Coalition of Hispanic Media.

According to the Hispanic daily, La Opinión, many of Dobbs’ fellow journalists at CNN are against his positions. María Hinojosa, who has worked as a reporter at CNN’s New York office since 2005, wrote on her Facebook page: “I told my friends at CNN for 5 years that the anger of Latinos only grows, and that it would negatively affect the channel.”