Lou Dobbs had Jeffrey Lord on his final program last night.  United Church News reports:

CNN commentator Lou Dobbs abruptly announced that he was quitting the news network last night, but not before he included misleading information about the United Church of Christ and its support for the interfaith media justice coalition, So We Might See. In October, through its website, the coalition asked individuals to sign onto a letter to the Federal Communications Commission calling for a public hearing into the effects of anti-immigrant hate speech in the media.

On his final show, Dobbs — whose anti-immigration diatribes had become commonplace — interviewed the American Spectator's Jeffrey Lord, a UCC member, who has written lengthy unsubstantiated opinion pieces over the past five weeks critical of the involvement of the United Church of Christ's Office of Communication, Inc. (OC, Inc.) in the So We Might See coalition. OC, Inc. is the UCC's historic and independently incorporated media justice organization.

Lord is best known for serving as the White House political director under Ronald Reagan.

You can read the UCC's response to Lord's false charges here.

But what is The American Spectator, the publication that Lord writes for?  It's a conservative publication know for attacking civil rights for minorities, promoting the war in Iraq, defending torture, and promoting the Religious Right.

A writer for The American Spectator was a perfect final guest for Dobb's program. As the website DropDobbs.com reports:

Over the years, Lou Dobbs has consistently used his CNN platform to spread hatred and fear. He has promoted the work of hate groups, spread racially charged conspiracy theories including about President Obama’s birth certificate, railed against “ethnocentric special interests,” and accused the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce of being sympathetic to “Mexico’s export of drugs and illegal aliens.”

DropDobbs.com is a project sponsored by Media Matters for America and other organizations. Lord falsely stated last night this grassroots effort was part of a United Church of Christ campaign.

Honesty and integrity ought to be highly held values for those in the media.  Sadly, Dobbs and Lord have used their positions to spread misinformation about all those they find disagreement with.

The United Church of Christ is a diverse national church with people of all sorts of theological and political backgrounds.  That's a strength for our denomination.  Even with those differences, however, we normally respect our covenantal tradition by expressing differences of opinion freely, with respect and honesty.  It's disappointing that Lord has used his website and CNN as a vehicle  for making less than honest comments about our church.

(With apologizes to Al Franken for using the title of his book.  It just fit so well with this post).