Originally posted at the America’s Voice blog.

Last night, Lou Dobbs aired his final broadcast on CNN.

Tonight, when viewers tune in to CNN primetime, the hate TV will be gone. According to the New York Times, CNN President Jonathan Klein said:

Lou Dobbs will carry the banner of advocacy journalism elsewhere.

In other words: Dobbs’ hate speech will no longer carry the CNN stamp of approval.

Thank you for speaking out and being a part of this victory.  You helped us raise money to put an ad on TV called “CNN: Drop the Hate, Drop Dobbs,” which argued that 260 hours a year of extreme, anti-immigrant programming was simply unacceptable. Your hard work surely helped CNN cancel “Lou Dobbs Tonight.”

Lou Dobbs gave the Minutemen vigilante group a national platform, spread lies that immigrants bring leprosy to the U.S., and implied that President Barack Obama is an undocumented immigrant from Kenya. He was one of the main forces of fear, lies, and hatred in the immigration debate.

Thanks to your voices, Dobbs will no longer be on CNN — please spread the word.

Unfortunately, there are still plenty of Lou Dobbs copy cats crowding out the conversation on immigration in Washington. We’re going to need every voice we can get to fight their extremism and stand up for a better America in the months ahead, with immigration reform on the horizon.

Help us spread the word and grow our movement for change!

Last night, Lou Dobbs hosted his last show ever on CNN. Yes, our dear friend Lou has officially resigned from the nation’s ‘most trusted name in news’ to bring his special blend of xenophobia and hate-mongering elsewhere.

This is incredible news and due in no small part to the efforts of the Drop Dobbs and Basta Dobbs campaigns who have put increasingly more pressure on CNN to fire Lou.

Check out his goodbye speech in the clip below. I love when he says that

“issues are now defined in the public arena by partisanship and ideology rather than by rigorous empirical thought and forthright analysis and discussion.”

I wonder if by forthright analysis he means spreading lies about the waves of immigrants infecting Americans with leprosy without a single shred of factual evidence to back it up.

But, I digress. Here’s Lou:

This marks a big victory in the fight against hate and anti-immigrant fervor in our country, but its only one small step in the right direction. Lou will, inevitably, find another pulpit from which to spout his dangerous rhetoric, and we will continue to counter with the truth and justice on our side.

But for now, mark one for the good guys.

As Eric Burns, president of Media Matters said:

“This is a happy day for all those who care about this nation of immigrants and believe in the power of media to elevate the political discourse.”

For a round-up of coverage check out Jackie Mahendra’s post over at the America’s Voice blog.

Originally posted at Standing FIRM.

America’s Voice has been steadily working towards the goal of airing a Drop Dobbs ad on CNN. Originally, the target was to run the ad during CNN’s off-the-mark “Latino in America”, which featured no mention of good ole Leprosy Lou.

When CNN turned them down – hmmm… wonder why – they persisted and eventually started shopping the ad around on different networks. Last night, the ad ran for the first time on MSNBC.

By refusing to deal with Lou Dobbs and his nightly tirade against immigrants, Latinos, and people of color, CNN is quickly losing credibility as the “Most Trusted Name in News.” As people become aware of the network’s one-sided coverage of immigration, they will start changing the channel — which is exactly what we did. America’s Voice is airing the ad on MSNBC!

Featured during the Rachel Maddow show, the ad ran in Atlanta, DC, Los Angeles, Chicago and New York. I didn’t get to catch it last night, but would love to hear from any of you that did. (Also, leave comments over at America’s Voice.)

The drum beat against Dobbs is steadily growing louder and CNN is clearly feeling the pressure – why else refuse to run the ad?

For more coverage of this, check out this post over at the America’s Voice blog with a roundup of posts.

And, if you haven’t yet, click here to tell CNN to tune into the ad and drop the hate!

Last week, the Reform Immigration FOR America campaign joined 14 other organizations in the launch of the Drop Dobbs campaign. DropDobbs.org will provide an up-to-date list of Dobbs’ sponsors and ways for concerned viewers to hold them accountable.

“CNN has become an impediment to having a serious, rational dialogue about immigration and what we should do to reform the immigration system in America,” said Rich Stolz, the Campaign Manager of the Reform Immigration FOR America campaign. “Misinformation, fear-mongering, and stirring up anger makes it harder to create an enforceable system of legal immigration, end illegal immigration, and get millions of immigrants currently living in the country illegally into the system and assimilated into society. Lou Dobbs has gone from journalist to talk-radio shock jock with immigrants and immigration in his cross-hairs and that doesn’t help the country move forward on the issue.”

Over the years, Dobbs has used his CNN platform to drum up opposition to specific reform proposals and fixing our broken immigration system and border security problems in general. He has received a number of awards from key organizations in the anti-immigration movement, has headlined their anti-immigration and anti-reform events, and served as a megaphone for disseminating their information, most of it factually doubtful and some of it demonstrably false. Now as a talk radio personality, he has added the “birther” conspiracy to his already sizeable repertoire of conspiracy theories that animate the anti-immigration movement and delay serious progress towards reform.
But there is a price to pay when a TV network goes on a nightly expedition to sow animosity towards a particular ethnic group or immigrants in general and this effort will force advertisers to make a conscious choice: Do you stand with the fastest growing group of consumers in America or do you stand with Lou Dobbs?

Visit Dropp Dobbs today to sign the petition for CNN to drop Dobbs and share with others.