Yesterday, I noted that CNN President Jon Klein had declared the birther story “dead” and told staffers on Lou Dobbs’ show to stop talking about it.
Now, Greg Sargent at The Plum Line reports that he’s backed off those comments:
CNN/US president Jonathan Klein is rebuffing the mounting criticism of the network over Lou Dobbs’ continued airing of “birther” theories, saying that Lou runs “his own show” that merely hosts “panels” with birther theorists and asserting that CNN respects viewers enough to let them “make up their own minds.”
Klein, in an interview with me just now, also took a shot at Dobbs’ critics, saying they’re politically motivated: “I understand that people with a partisan point of view from one extreme or another might get annoyed that certain subjects are aired.”
CNN is under mounting pressure to get Dobbs to stop giving airtime to birther theorists and suggesting there’s something to their case, which he’s been doing even though the network has repeatedly debunked the theories. Jon Stewart recently mocked Dobbs for not even watching his own network. Media Matters has blasted CNN for “mainstreaming the fringe.”
The Southern Poverty Law Center called for Dobbs’ firing today, and MoveOn is demanding CNN apologize for Dobbs’ “helping to spread hate and fear.”
“Look, Lou’s his own show, and CNN in general has repeatedly and thoroughly reported on the facts behind this situation,” Klein said to me, adding that Lou had merely hosted “a few conversations with people representing a wide range of opinions.”
(…)
Asked if CNN would take any action if Dobbs continued airing the birther theories, Klein said No: “I think no good journalist would ever say that a particular story will never be covered again. Every day brings new facts, new pegs.”
So, we can look forward to many more weeks of Lou Dobbs spreading paranoid baseless lies about the President while the rest of us concentrate on what really matters.
Uh, not that I’m one to support Birthers, but what the hell does the Southern Poverty Law Center have to do with this issue?
I don’t disagree, though I do think its clear that behind the veil of birtherism is out-and-out racism
Journalists are consistently failing to have any duty to the truth. If you interview two guys, one says the sky is blue, and one says the sky is orange, your job is not just to say “well, opinions are widely varied on what color the sky is, we respect you enough to make up your own mind!” Give me a break.
Dobbs is not a journalist; he’s just another pundit. He’s another O’Reilly — the only difference is the issues that make the nutter start frothing at the mouth.
Oh, give me a break, Doug! RACISM?!!?!! One needn’t care about his race to be concerned about a cover-up.
Making comments like that makes you sound like a race hustler.
James,
There are no honest questions left on this issue. Everyone one of the birther arguments lack merit legally and factually. Anyone who continues to hold onto to this theory is either stupid, delusional, or willfully ignorant.
And if you think that we’d even be talking about this if the President’s father had come from Australia, you’re kidding yourself
So, lunatic conspiracy theorists are “racists,” simply because President Barry is black?!?! That’s absurd.
And yes, I have no doubt that the so-called “birthers” would raise the same questions about any Democrat President whose father was a foreign national, whose mother married another foreign national who took them to a foreign country, and who found more accord with foreign critics of American hegemony and foreign policy than with more traditional and respectable schools American foreign-policy thought.
To question whether these people are “racists” is — without more about their history — race-baiting, pure and simply. It is, or should be, beneath you to raise the nuclear bomb of political discourse with nothing more than the fact that they are challenging Barry, and he is black.
Sorry, James, but I have a hard time believing that this would even be an issue if the President’s father came from Australia, or Ireland.