The Houston Chronicle joined the bandwagon in criticizing MoveOn.org for the Petraeus ad in the New York Times. They also think Dan Rather was wrong in suing CBS for being fired due to an inaccurate story on Bush and his supposed time in the National Guard.
They chastized the GOP for immigrant bating, which is great since few media outlets have criticized this.
But I think they really missed the most important "media legend." Where is Lou Dobbs in all of this? Without his constant harping on immigration issues day after day, we might not be in such a mess with immigration reform; the DREAM ACT would probably pass; the state of Virginia wouldn't be considering building a detention facility for immigrants.
The way Lou Dobbs repeatedly gives out mis-information (lies) is unfortunate. It reminds me of this guy from Sevilla I read about who was an important character in the Spanish Inquisition. I believe his name was Ferrer. He was a priest. One Sunday in June, 1391 he gave a Lou Dobbs type of sermon at mass. He told his audience that Jews were terrible and should be eliminated. The congregation got really excited and ran out of the church. Others joined them and by the end of the day 5,000 Jews were killed. The massacre also forced thousands of Jewish families to flee, mostly going to Portugal.
Would you believe the church made him a saint?
This is a true story.
Its kind of the same thing that Dobbs is doing. He is inciting people to hate immigrants. His diatribes are broadcast every evening at 5 pm on CNN. He has a chance to get almost everybody in the U.S. excited about explusing undocumented immigrants. He has been successful. There is a lot more hate in the air since he began his mission.
I'm surprised that the Houston Chronicle did not comment on Lou Dobbs and the harm he has brought to our nation.
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Sept. 24, 2007, 10:01PM
Mistakes
Political forces on the left and the right and a media legend diminish themselves
Houston Chronicle
While the American public faces important and consequential questions of public policy, the news media have found time to focus on three relatively minor mistakes. Though small, each mistake has cast a large shadow on the person or persons who made it:
• The left-leaning MoveOn.org erred when it placed a cut-rate advertisement in The New York Times implying that Gen. David Petraeus, the U.S. commander in Iraq, might have betrayed the American people. First, Petraeus did not deserve such a jibe, and second, MoveOn.org destroyed its credibility so that its legitimate message — progress in bringing stability to Iraq has been uneven and insignificant — was lost in the well-provoked response to the ad.
• On the right, Republican candidates for president are mistaken to spurn candidate forums put on by minority organizations. Blacks and Hispanics might not be large forces in GOP primaries, but the GOP presidential nominee will need substantial minority support in November 2008 to win.
Beyond the presidency, Republican influence in Congress and at the state level is waning, not only because of diminished support for the war, but also because of many conservatives' unhelpful and off-putting clamor against illegal immigrants. Without offering a solution to the problem of illegal immigration, the rhetoric tends to alienate naturalized citizens and native voters of Hispanic dissent, without which the Republican Party cannot prosper.
• Finally, former CBS News anchor Dan Rather, who got his start in Houston, wrote a sad footnote to his mostly distinguished career when he sued his old employers for $70 million. The suit alleges that CBS made Rather a scapegoat for an inaccurate story about George W. Bush's service in the Texas Air National Guard. Whatever the network executives' sins, they don't deserve to be punished to that degree after paying Rather millions per year long after he had passed his prime.
Rather's suit, while presenting a weak case against CBS, makes a wounding case against his own prowess as a broadcast journalist. Despite the fact that Rather bore the title of managing editor of CBS News, he alleges in his suit that he bore no responsibility for the content or accuracy of his broadcasts: The mighty network anchor is revealed for what he or she is, merely a familiar face reading from a teleprompter reports he or she had nothing to do with preparing.
For link to editorial click title of this post
photo: http://www.voteraction.org/video/stills/dobbs-bw.jpg
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