LULAC, Mark Potok of SPLC, NCLR, America's Voice, MMFA cheer & smear over Dobbs leaving

There's a round-up of reaction from far-left groups to Lou Dobbs' announcement that he's leaving CNN here. The biases of the article's author (Victor Manuel Ramos of the Orlando Sentinel) are discussed in this separate post. The quotes below were offered at a press conference organized by Media Matters for America:

* Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center:

"Lou Dobbs has done more to defame Latino immigrants to this country than probably any other human being in the United States... Concomitant with his propagandas and his pushing of racial conspiracy theories and any number of other falsehoods, we have seen a rise in anti-Latino hate crime of 40 percent between 2003 and 2007. Dobbs has consistently lied or misled the public about such matters as leprosy being brought to this country by immigrants; the criminality of immigrants; the level of imprisonment of criminal immigrants and conspiracy theories about secret invasions of the United States and so on."

It's a bit surprising to see Potok trot out his misleading statistic. And, while Dobbs later admitted that a report he broadcast and defended was wrong about leprosy, immigrants do in fact bring diseases into the U.S. Why is Potok trying to pretend they don't? The level of imprisonment was another error that Dobbs corrected; he'd referred to the percentage of aliens in all jails when the statistic was just for those in the federal system. Potok not only has not corrected his use of misleading statistics, he repeats it above. As for the "secret invasion", that's a strawman. It would be too difficult for Potok to admit that millions of Mexicans inside the U.S. gives that country a great deal of political power inside the U.S. In some cases, there appears to be an explicit ceding of power, such as with Mexican consular officials stationed at U.S. Border Patrol offices, Mexican political parties allowed to organize marches inside the U.S. designed to change our laws to suit Mexico, and so on.

* Brent Wilkes of the League of United Latin American Citizens (see the link) says:

"This is a major victory from all people who want to stop hate and disinformation from being portrayed as legitimate news on our airwaves."

* Adam Luna of Frank Sharry's America's Voice:

"For years, Lou Dobbs has brought the extreme into the mainstream every day at primetime... As our work continues, we hope they would increasingly go back to the fringe where they belong."

* Janet Murguia of the National Council of La Raza (see that link too):

"It is no secret that the target around the advertisers who had been educated on the impact of Lou Dobbs’ rhetoric and the constant negative harangue... added considerable momentum" to the coalition's fight.

Thu, 11/12/2009 - 13:55 · Importance: 4