Update: Today, Media Matters launched its television ad calling on CNN to credibly address its Lou Dobbs problem. CNN has repeatedly allowed Dobbs to promote racially charged conspiracy theories about President Obama's birth certificate on his prime-time television show. You can watch the ad, set to air this week on major news networks, here. Sign their petition over at DobbsConspiracy.com.
Recently we reported on how CNN pundit Lou Dobbs was stirring up controversy over at "The Most Trusted Name in News" with the long-debunked claim that President Obama's birth certificate is fake. Here's the latest video roundup, in case you missed it:
Many organizations acted quickly to call out the conspiratorial claims. MoveOn.org demanded a public apology, the Southern Poverty Law Center called for CNN to take Dobbs off the air, and America's Voice sent a letter to CNN's president. As Greg Sargent reports:
The letter, from executive director Frank Sharry, is hard-hitting and worth quoting in full:
As America's Most Trusted Name in News, CNN has a responsibility to its viewers to provide commentary and analysis that is substantive and accurate. However, those promoting conspiracy theories about President Obama's citizenship, the threat of leprosy from immigrants and other falsehoods should be held accountable for spreading misinformation.
New York Times columnist Frank Rich weighed in over the weekend in Small Beer, Big Hangover:
One of the loudest birther enablers is not at Fox but CNN: Lou Dobbs, who was heretofore best known for trying to link immigrants, especially Hispanics, to civic havoc. Dobbs is one-stop shopping for the excesses of this seismic period of racial transition. And he is following a traditional, if toxic, American playbook. The escalating white fear of newly empowered ethnic groups and blacks is a naked replay of more than a century ago, when large waves of immigration and the northern migration of emancipated blacks, coupled with a tumultuous modernization of the American work force, unleashed a similar storm of racial and nativist panic.
Media Matters reports on the internal debate raging at CNN in CNN's Kurtz, CNN president at odds over whether Dobbs is in "straight newscast" business:
On CNN's Reliable Sources, host and media critic Howard Kurtz said that he doesn't "think there's any question that [CNN host Lou] Dobbs is in the opinion business." Yet the Associated Press reported in an August 1 article that Kurtz's boss, CNN President Jonathan Klein, said, in the AP's words, that "Dobbs has been doing a relatively straight newscast," and quoted Klein stating that Dobbs "brings more than three decades of experience reporting and broadcasting the news."
And finally, perhaps most importantly, the controversial anchor's ratings have taken a steep nosedive since the birther controversy broke:
In other words, Mr. Dobbs' audience has decreased 15 percent in total viewers and 27 percent in the demo since the start of the controversy. Maybe this will get CNN President Jon Klein's attention. After initially attempting to put Dobbs' birther madness to bed in an email that read, "It seems this story is dead- because anyone who still is not convinced doesn't really have a legitimate beef," Klein has had to go on the defensive as Dobbs continued to merrily dig himself a hole.
Even if, as Fox pundit Bill O'Reilly claimed last week, this is all a ratings game for Lou Dobbs, it now looks to be a game that CNN is losing-- bigtime. And, as SPLC reminds us, stirring up unfounded race-based fear is a dangerous game to be playing at a time when Americans are struggling to surmount some of the biggest economic challenges faced this century.