"DEL BARCO: The immigration debate is a staple of conservative talk radio. More than 40 conservative radio hosts came to Washington this week, pressuring Congress to deny undocumented immigrants health care coverage. CNN anchor Lou Dobbs was among those holding their feet to the fire. ...There's now a movement against Dobbs, anti-illegal immigration messages. Critics say he promotes hate speech. Supporters say he has a right to say what he wants. Here to talk about that debate is Roberto Lovato, a journalist and activist campaigning to get Lou Dobbs off the air. It's a campaign called "Basta Dobbs" or Enough Dobbs. Also, Ira Mehlman, a spokesman for the Federation for American Immigration Reform. His group sponsored this week's radiothon song, and Rick Rodriguez, a journalism professor at Arizona State University."
"Mr. MEHLMAN: You know, the only hate I'm noticing is the people who defend illegal immigration attacking the people who want our immigration laws enforced and saying that any criticism of immigration policy, any criticism of illegal immigration is tantamount to attack against immigrants or Latinos. And that's simply not true. Again, we are not focusing on any particular ethnic group here, we are focusing on whether active coming to the country illegally harms Americans."
"Mr. LOVATO: Look, to the people that have been talking about this for some time. And most recently, people like a gentleman named President Barack Obama, who last year said and I'll quote, "a certain segment was basically feeding a kind of xenophobia. There's a reason why hate crimes against Hispanic people doubled last year," Obama said. If you have people like Lou Dobbs and Rush Limbaugh ginning things up, it's not surprising that that would happen."
"Mr. LOVATO: Our concerns were on the gamut there. And - and if you look at Lou Dobbs' program regularly, as we have, and you analyze it - as many other groups have as well for many years- there's a very clear case against him in turns of three points. First, the fact that he obsesses more than anyone else in media. The organization Media Matters, for example, had a study that showed that from January to July, Lou Dobbs' show had 77 out of 140 of discussion hours about "illegal aliens," quote, unquote.
And secondly, he regularly and systematically lies about immigrants, especially Latino immigrants who he's accused of everything from having caused 7,000 cases of leprosies, despite the fact that The Center for Disease Control always have shown that this is just, you know, (unintelligible) or that Latinos under that immigrants - undocumented immigrants constitute a third of the prison system in the U.S. something the Department of Justice has denied.
So, the most dangerous thing, however, is that he uses his show as a platform for groups that promote extremist views, and groups that are themselves extreme and even violent if you look at, say, the Minutemen, whose members in Arizona killed nine-year-old Brisenia Flores and Shawna Forde, the member of the Minutemen has also been affiliated with the group FAIR…
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=112916519edit to post link.
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