Fox News reporter Geraldo Rivera spoke at a luncheon sponsored by El Diario La Prensa NY yesterday, during which he unleashed a devastating critique of CNN's Lou Dobbs, and told the assembled crowd that Dobbs' future career path will not lead to Fox.
Rivera told the crowd, "One of the aspects of our reality in the United States right now is the defamatory tone of the immigration debate and how that immigration debate has slandered an entire race of people. It has been reckless beyond imagining, it has been reckless beyond precedent."
He then trained his sights on Dobbs: "Lou Dobbs, a man who was an accomplished journalist, and who left to start his own venture in the digital media... and then came back to CNN, and nobody was watching his program. He discovered that one of the ways he could get people to watch was to make of the image of a young Latino trying to get into this country a profoundly negative icon. Lou Dobbs is almost singlehandedly responsible for creating, for being the architect of the young-Latino-as-scapegoat for everything that ails this country."
As for the chances of Dobbs one day washing ashore at Fox, Rivera told the crowd, "I can tell you proudly, when [Dobbs] was widely rumored to be coming to my network, I called my boss... and he said it's absolutely untrue."
WATCH:
In related news, Brian Stelter reports that CNN's broadcast of a documentary special, "Latino In America" has drawn protests from "activist groups that are calling on the cable news channel to fire" Dobbs:
CNN, a unit of Time Warner, has not commented on the protests, or covered them on its news programs. One of the activists featured in the documentary said on Wednesday she tried to bring up what she called Mr. Dobbs's "hatred" on one of the channel's news programs, but that her remarks were cut from the interview.
Isabel Garcia, a civil rights lawyer who was featured in the documentary and organized a protest against Mr. Dobbs in Tucson on Wednesday, said that she felt censored by CNN after the channel edited her comments about the anchor out of an interview.
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CNN's Special on Latinos Stirs Protests Against Anchor [NYT Media Decoder]
PREVIOUSLY, on the HUFFINGTON POST:
"Drop Dobbs": CNN Pressured To Give Up Controversial Host
Dobbs Takes Aim At HuffPost Critic