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Los Angeles Times: CNN: Corrupt News Network (12/1/07) by Tim Rutten
Why is it that while the U.S. "is at war in the Middle East and Central Asia, the economy is writhing like a snake with a broken back," and "Americans just can't afford to be sick with anything that won't be treated with aspirin and bed rest," last week's Republican debate focused on "a discussion of immigration, Biblical inerrancy and the propriety of flying the Confederate flag?"The answer is that CNN's most popular news-oriented personality, Lou Dobbs, has made opposition to illegal immigration and free trade the centerpiece of his neonativist/neopopulist platform.... His network is in a desperate ratings battle with Fox News and, in a critical prime-time slot, with MSNBC's Keith Olbermann. So, what's good for Dobbs is good for CNN. In other words, CNN intentionally directed the Republicans' debate to advance its own interests. Make immigration a bigger issue and you've made a bigger audience for Dobbs. That's corruption, and it's why the Republican candidates had to spend more than half an hour "debating" an issue on which their differences are essentially marginal—and, more important, why GOP voters had to sit and wait, mostly in vain, for the issues that really concern them to be discussed.
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