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This week, CNN's Soledad O'Brien will anchor "Latino in America," the latest installment of her multi-year in-depth reports on America's multicultural identity. According to Baltimore Sun television critic David Zurawik, it's some of her best work:
"She is in total command of the subject matter and seems so finely tuned to the nuances of assimilation, multiculturalism and changing notions of identity that you can't help but trust her after just a few minutes of watching. And she forges that same kind of bond with the people she is interviewing and reporting on in the film, getting sullen-looking teenage boys to confess their ethnic insecurities and clinically depressed adolescent girls to talk openly about the pain they feel in being caught between two cultures.
"Conversations about race and identity do not come easily in this country, and members of the media do not achieve the kind of rapport O'Brien does by hot-dogging in for on-camera interviews after all the documentary grunt work has been done by producers and other reporters."
Unfortunately for O'Brien, her colleague Lou Dobbs has so angered Latino activists and bloggers that her quality work is at risk of being ignored. For years, Dobbs has been pushing the narrative that that porous borders and uncontrolled immigration, primarily from Mexico, has weakened the US economy and made us more vulnerable to crime and terrorism. Here is Dobbs debating the president of the National Council of La Raza, Janet Murguia in 2006, after NCLR objected to an episode of Dobbs' show suggesting the NCLR helps illegal immigrants evade law enforcement.
Civil rights groups have been trying to get CNN to can Dobbs. When Latino leaders who saw a preview of the Latino in America series noted that Dobbs' controversial coverage is not addressed, the immigrant advocacy group America's Voice tried to buy airtime during the show to run this anti-Dobbs ad:
CNN rejected the ad. A longer video running on the DropDobbs.com website accuses CNN of trying to have it both ways: wooing Latino ad dollars with programming directed toward them, but disrespecting Latinos by keeping Dobbs' race-baiting reporting and commentary on the air:
For his part, Dobbs insists that his attackers are marginal ideologues funded by liberal billionaire George Soros and working at the behest of the White House(?)
I've got to be honest with you, folks, that strikes me as more than a little loopy. Then again, Dobbs lost all credibility as a journalist when he started passing along bogus data from the Council of Conservative Citizens, a group with strong links to white supremacist organizations. CCC is noted for its opposition to interracial marriage and "forced integration" among other things. Then there was that silly nonsense about President Obama's birth certificate:
(By the way, the birth certificate that I was issued by the State of New Jersey doesn't list the attending physician, either.)
Rumor has it that Dobbs is headed to Fox Business News, so maybe CNN's problem will take care of itself. In the meantime, Vivir Latino won't be tuning in for Latino in America:
Claro the show will be surrounded by Spanglish ads urging you to buy from Walmart with it’s horrible treatment of workers and eat McDonald’s with it’s horrible treatment of animals and your body. But air an ad that has something to say and is trying to sell a message of truth? Not CNN. They rejected America’s Voice money and ad.
I don’t have cable so I don’t watch CNN and I had no intention of watching the series, Latino in America
And LatinoPoliticsBlog says maybe it's time to give the boob tube a rest:
I think that Latinos should reconsider the role of television in their lives. Imagine what could be accomplished if we tuned out this noisy, unrepresentative medium altogether and instead focused on reading to our children, watching film, and becoming more physically active.
Related:
Sorry, Soledad.
