On Tuesday's Lou Dobbs Tonight on CNN, Dobbs scolded “this country's major daily newspapers” for how they “misled” readers in their coverage of immigration rallies since “their headlines failed to tell the truth about what the rallies are all about: Rallies in favor of illegal immigration, and amnesty for illegal aliens.” Dobbs showed the front pages of four newspapers, starting with the New York Times' headline of “Immigrants Rally in Scores of Cities for Legal Status,” followed by the Washington Post's description of “Immigration Rights Rallies,” USA Today's “Historic rallies voice a 'dream'” and the Wall Street Journal's “Immigration-Policy Protests Draw Huge Crowds of Workers.”
Dobbs, however, offered praise for one newspaper's “astute” take, quoting approvingly from a Tuesday Las Vegas Review-Journal editorial which contended: “Organizers wanted the marches to be more about people and less about policy. Most television stations swallowed the bait and delivered news reports soft enough to follow Sesame Street on PBS.” (Transcript, of the comments from Dobbs, follows.)
On the April 11 Lou Dobbs Tonight, after a brief item on how an anti-illegal immigration protester was attacked and injured in Maine, and Dobbs pointing out how the many protests elsewhere were violence-free, Dobbs observed, as viewers saw the front pages of the newspapers with the headlines he quoted:
“One newspaper, the Las Vegas Review-Journal, however, was somewhat more straightforward. It made this astute comment in an editorial today saying, quote [text on screen]: 'Organizers wanted the marches to be more about people and less about policy. Most television stations swallowed the bait and delivered news reports soft enough to follow Sesame Street on PBS. The reason for such an attest is obvious. If marchers made the demands the centerpiece for protests, the outcry from American taxpayers already fed up with immigration would overwhelm the previously full mailboxes of every member of Congress.'”
