Condemn CNN for Its Lou Dobbs "Birther" Fiasco

By Byard Duncan, AlterNet. Posted August 4, 2009.

As if the right's nakedly racist rhetoric weren't bad enough, the American public must continue to swallow the paranoid bloviations of Lou Dobbs, CNN's resident "birther."

In recent weeks, Dobbs has made it his mission to ignore the facts about President Barack Obama's citizenship, demanding again and again that Obama present proof that he was born in Hawaii. Obama has, of course, presented thorough evidence of his citizenship.

But what's perhaps worse than Dobbs' persistence is the reluctance among CNN's bureaucracy to take a firm stance on the issue. The network has allowed Dobbs to continue reporting on birthers, despite an assertion from CNN President Jon Klein that "this story is dead."

Dobbs' most recent endeavors into the conspiracy theory are excusable, Klein recently argued, because they deal with controversy surrounding the debate, not with Dobbs' personal opinion.

But isn't CNN's very act of treating the issue as a supposed "controversy" a thumbs-up promotion of the theory? Shouldn't journalism -- especially from a network that claims to uphold the most exhaustive principles of objectivity -- be more than a platform for paranoid racism? Even Republicans like Bill O'Reilly are starting to renounce Dobbs' jowl-jiggling windbaggery.

"Mr. Dobbs is trying to get ratings, trying to be provocative, just using this to stir the pot and get viewers," O'Reilly said last week.

Ann Coulter, for her part, has said "there's nothing to it ... It's just a few cranks out there."

The "Lou Dobbs Problem," as it's come to be known, "raises the troubling question of who is really calling the shots at CNN," said Eric Burns, president of Media Matters for America. "How can Klein expect Americans to believe that CNN is the 'most trusted name in news' when CNN's own president can't stand by his word?"

It's time to let Klein and others at CNN know that sanctioning Dobbs' rants are tantamount to giving birthers a legitimate platform. Join MoveOn in condemning the network. Tell them to address Lou Dobbs in a prompt, credible manner.

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