by Roberto Lovato
Who would have thought that CNN’s Lou Dobbs would be the person most responsible for pushing Latinos to build a civil and human rights movement for the media age?
After being attacked and beaten down day in and day out on CNN by Dobbs for so many years, Latinos across the country are starting literally to torch with their fingers and saying basta, enough is enough.
Far from abandoning the years of street actions protesting CNN’s unwillingness to heed our ongoing concerns about Dobbs’ anti-Latino fear-mongering disguised as nightly “news,” Latinos are now adding digitally-driven action to what is becoming a major online and offline political movement: thousands of English- and Spanish-language speakers have already signed our petition at www.bastadobbs.com.
Others are text messaging the words “ENOUGH” OR “BASTA” to 3-0-6-4-4 to demand that CNN dump Dobbs. Several other campaigns targeting Dobbs are growing rapidly. Armies of Twitterers are sending messages to Soledad O’Brien demanding she use her influence at CNN to take a stand against Dobbs.
Dobbs has started to feel the growing pressure coming from our movement. He fulminated and fumbled as he attacked our bastadobbs campaign and even called me a “left wing propagandist” and a “flea” during a more than 2-minute on-air rant last week. But instead of personalizing or reacting to Dobbs’ puerile ploys, we are focused to carry out an unprecedented national campaign that will bring about his media demise.
Presente.org and its partner organizations in the 25 U.S. cities with the largest Latino television audiences adding up to 75 percent of all Latino television viewing audiences are leading the charge not just against Lou Dobbs, but on CNN itself.
We hold CNN and its president, Jon Klein, ultimately responsible for keeping the media personality most committed to promoting anti-Latino hatred among millions on an almost daily basis. Using a combination of traditional and new media, we are informing ourselves about and mobilizing around the threat posed by CNN and Dobbs, whom many of us consider the Most Dangerous Man for Latinos in America.
Dobbs’ threat to Latinos and to the brand of the news organization claiming to have the “most trusted name in news” are rooted in the three pillars of Dobbs’ near-daily attacks: n obsession with Latinos and immigrants, n promotion of systematic myths about Latinos, and n immigrants and, most dangerously, providing a platform for leaders of the most radical and violent anti-Latino groups in the United States.
The media mud on the face of CNN president Jon Klein was on full display recently.
Without even blinking, Dobbs broadcast his radio show from a national lobbying conference sponsored by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR), founded by a white nationalist and designated as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Such behavior by Dobbs has sparked Latino media activism like that found at www.bastadobbs.com and reported on in the Latino media.
Front page articles, spirited editorials and major television and radio reports about CNN and Dobbs are filling the Spanish-language media (all except CNN en Español, which does not translate or distribute Dobbs for its Spanish-speaking network) More than anyone else, Dobbs is helping English- and Spanish-language media and the larger Latino community make the connection in several recent reports: that there is a growing link between anti-immigrant hate speech on television and increased violence against Latinos in our hometowns. Thanks, in no small part to the threat posed by Dobbs and CNN, we are building a major civil and human rights movement of the media age. Hispanic Link.
(Roberto Lovato is a founding member of presente.org, the sponsor of the www.bastadobbs.com campaign. He also writes for New America Media, the Nation and other outlets.) ©2009
