Lou Dobbs: "Quit or Pushed?"

In his penultimate broadcast, Lou Dobbs ran a story on White House communications director Anita Dunn's decision to leave the administration at the end of the month. In what now seems to be an ironic twist, much of the report ran over the caption, "QUIT OR PUSHED?" a question that today reporters must be asking about Dobbs himself.

It was a quintessential Dobbs report, featuring almost all the facets we have come to expect from his program. It was based on a conspiracy theory: At no point did Dobbs or reporter Lisa Sylvester present even the slightest bit of evidence that Dunn had left on anything other than her own volition, and neither mentioned that she was originally hired as communications director on only an interim basis, making her decision entirely expected. It included falsehoods: Dobbs, Sylvester, and Politico's Craig Gordon all mischaracterized comments Dunn made about Mao Zedong during a high school graduation speech earlier this year. It included a misleading claim intended to establish a pattern: Sylvester provided a list of four other "administration officials to leave recently," which included former WH communications director Ellen Moran -- whom Dunn replaced -- and Louis Caldera, the former director of the WH Military Office, both of whom left the White House in May.

If only the segment had included an attack on immigrants, we could have sent it straight to the Newseum as the absolute paragon of Dobbs reporting.

It's worth noting that there's significantly more evidence that Dobbs was pushed out than that Dunn was. Dunn had drawn fire from right-wing media figures like Glenn Beck who mischaracterized Dunn's remarks about Mao -- which were similar to comments numerous conservatives have made over the years; even Ann Coulter didn't think Dunn's statements were worth attacking. Dobbs, meanwhile, was criticized by two wide-ranging coalitions -- the DropDobbs campaign, which included Media Matters, NDN, the Southern Poverty Law Center, and NCLR, among other groups, and BastaDobbs.com, a network organized by Presente.org -- in response to his long history of using his CNN platform to spread hatred, fear, and conspiracy theories. Dunn leaving the White House was long-expected and doesn't take effect until the end of the month; Dobbs leaving CNN was unanticipated and effective almost immediately -- he announced he was leaving at the top of his final broadcast, and his staff was reportedly told he was on his way out only hours before yesterday's show.

And of course, there's this little tidbit from today's New York Times: "Months ago the president of CNN/U.S., Jonathan Klein, offered a choice to Lou Dobbs ... [he] could vent his opinions on radio and anchor an objective newscast on television, or he could leave CNN."

Luckily, CNN already has the graphics made up for its Reliable Sources segment on Dobbs leaving -- they just need to swap Dunn's head for Dobbs'