For the sake of our country’s tradition of journalistic integrity, CNN should can Lou Dobbs.

The broadcaster, host of CNN’s “Lou Dobbs Tonight,” has been a journalist for more than 30 years. He was CNN’s first chief economics correspondent when it launched in 1980, helping to establish it as a major force.

But over the last several years, Dobbs has consistently betrayed the ethics and standards of journalism.

Dobbs has become a central figure in a trend in American broadcast news that replaces facts with innuendo and breeds paranoia in a misinformed populace.

He has repeatedly scapegoated Hispanic immigrants.

He has claimed, falsely and without substantiation, that undocumented immigrants are a violent threat to our society. He has claimed, incorrectly, that they don’t pay taxes. And he has let his program fuel the ridiculous allegation that they are responsible for a massive increase in leprosy cases in the United States.

Dobbs has a strong affiliation with FAIR (Federation for American Immigration Reform), an organization labeled as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

He has also invited and given wholesale support to members of the Minutemen, whose leader Jim Gilchrist recently compared the National Council of La Raza, a mainstream advocacy group, to the Ku Klux Klan.

Dobbs also peddled the discredited claims of the so-called birthers, who contend that President Obama is not a U.S. citizen, even though his own network aired a segment proving the president’s citizenship last year.

Despite a subsequent decrease in ratings and an admonishment by CNN President Jon Klein that the issue was dead, Dobbs remains on the air.

Dobbs, who claims that his critics are denying him free speech, has been a key voice, along with personalities like Pat Buchanan, Glenn Beck and Rush Limbaugh, in a group of on-air personalities that have stirred up anti-immigrant, and consequently, anti-Hispanic sentiment in this country.

According to the FBI, hate crimes against Hispanics and other minority groups have risen 40 percent between 2003 and 2007. This month, a Southern Poverty Law Center report revealed that a “climate of fear” for Latinos existed in a Long Island county only an hour’s drive away from Dobbs’s suburban New Jersey home.

Obama recently bemoaned that “the direction of news is all blogosphere, all opinions, with no serious fact-checking, no serious attempts to put stories in context.”

Dobbs is undoubtedly a major part of pushing news in that direction, and for that reason, he should no longer be able to use the platform of a network whose entire existence purports to be that of serious news programs.

While he is entitled to his opinion, Dobbs the so-called journalist must go.

Ed Morales is a contributor to the New York Times and Newsday and is the author of “Living in Spanglish.” He can be reached at pmproj [at] progressive [dot] org.