“Distort D'Newsa” now a CNN analyst

Controversial right-wing pundit and author Dinesh D'Souza has a new title -- “CNN analyst.” On June 5, during coverage of former President Ronald Reagan's death, D'Souza (known by some as “Distort D'Newsa,” according to 1985 and 1991 articles in The Washington Post) appeared on a CNN breaking news segment; on June 6, D'Souza appeared on three CNN programs: Lou Dobbs Tonight, American Morning, and Anderson Cooper 360. On the latter two programs, the anchors -- Soledad O'Brien and Anderson Cooper, respectively -- identified D'Souza as a “CNN analyst.”

As an undergraduate in the early 1980s at Dartmouth College, D'Souza gained national notoriety as co-founder and editor of the conservative newspaper The Dartmouth Review. During D'Souza's tenure as editor of the Review, according to a September 22, 1995, article in The Washington Post, "[T]he off-campus newspaper [The Dartmouth Review] published an interview with a former leader of the Ku Klux Klan, using a mock photograph of a black man hanging from a campus tree, and 'outed' at least two gay students."

From 1987 to 1988, D'Souza served as the senior domestic policy analyst at the White House under Reagan. Since then, backed by right-wing foundations (which have supported his work as a research fellow at the American Enterprise Institute and currently support his work as the Robert and Karen Rishwain Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution), D'Souza has written several books, including the racially charged The End of Racism: Principles for a Multiracial Society in 1995.

According to a dossier by Media Transparency: The Money Behind the Media, “The book argues that low-income black people are basically 'pathological' and that white racism really isn't racism at all, just a logical response to this 'pathology.'” According to D'Souza's personal website, in The End of Racism, D'Souza “argues that the American obsession with race is fueled by a civil rights establishment that has a vested interest in perpetuating black dependency.” D'Souza also argued, in a September 1995 Wall Street Journal op-ed, that "[t]he best way for African-Americans to save private-sector affirmative action may be to repeal the Civil Rights Act of 1964."

On August 22, 1999, The Washington Post reported, "[E]fforts by conservatives to build support among blacks were set back by the angry reaction of African-American conservatives Glenn Loury and Robert Woodson to books on race by two conservative authors, neither of whom is black: Charles Murray (“The Bell Curve”) and Dinesh D'Souza (“The End of Racism”). In a highly publicized decision, Loury and Woodson resigned in protest in 1995 from the American Enterprise Institute, where Murray and D'Souza [were] fellows."

D'Souza's writings have appeared in major newspapers, including The Wall Street Journal and The Washington Post. He has also appeared on such TV programs as ABC's Nightline, CBS's Face the Nation, FOX News Channel's Hannity & Colmes, MSNBC's Hardball with Chris Matthews, and CNBC's Dennis Miller.