Latino backlash grows over Donald Trump’s friendly Univision interview
The Washington Post (archive.ph)
By Michael Scherer
2023-11-19 04:39:09GMT
The nation’s largest Spanish-language media company, Univision, faced growing backlash Friday for its handling of a recent interview with former president Donald Trump, as major Latino advocacy groups delivered a letter of protest to the network’s executives and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus prepared to request a meeting with the network.
Actor and comedian John Leguizamo, who recently took a turn as host of Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show,” also posted a video on Instagram on Thursday night calling for a boycott of the network until it stopped its rejection of Biden ads, some of which were canceled just before the Trump interview aired.
“I am asking all my brothers and sisters who are actors, artists, politicians, activists to not go on Univision,” he said in a message in English and Spanish.
The pushback comes after a Nov. 7 interview with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago Club in Florida that was arranged with the help of Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and attended by a trio of senior executives at Univision’s parent company. The interview was notable for its gracious tone, lack of follow-up questions and Trump’s assertion in the first minutes about owners of the network.
“They like me,” Trump said.
It’s a sharp contrast to the long history of tension between Trump and Univision — a fact that alarmed both Democrats and journalists inside Univision.
The network, which has said it has also requested an interview with President Biden, announced a new policy of preventing opposition advertising during single-candidate interviews shortly before the Trump interview aired. The network also canceled a booking with a Biden spokeswoman to respond to the interview on a subsequent news broadcast.
A top anchor at Univision in Miami, León Krauze, who helmed the late-night newscast, announced he had abruptly separated from the network Wednesday, less than a week after the interview aired. Neither Krauze nor the network offered a reason for the separation in their statements about the split.
Joaquin Blaya, a former president of Univision who created its signature news show in the late 1980s, told The Washington Post in an interview this week that he worried the network had moved away from its founding mission.
“I am not surprised that someone who is a serious journalist like León Krauze would not be the kind of journalist that they want there,” Blaya said. “They are different times. It is not good what is happening there.”
Blaya — who hired the network’s most famous anchor, Jorge Ramos — later ran Telemundo, the other major Spanish-language network in the United States. He said the Trump interview this month was a step back for Univision towards a journalistic approach he associated with some major broadcasters in Mexico. The Mexican media company Grupo Televisa, which has long had a close relationship with political power brokers in that country, recently merged with the owners of Univision to take joint control of the company.
“This was Mexican-style news coverage, a repudiation of the concept of separation of business and news,” Blaya said of the Trump interview. “What I saw there was batting practice, someone dropping balls for him to hit out of the park. I think it was an embarrassment.”
Wade Davis, one of the TelevisaUnivision executives who attended the Mar-a-Lago meeting, sent a note to U.S. staff this week addressing the controversy caused by the Trump interview.
“Our goal is to cover candidates from all political parties — Democrats, Republicans and Independents — and to assure Hispanics of the most comprehensive access to information that will help them make educated decisions at the ballot box,” Davis wrote. “Our mission is to make Latinos a vital part of our electoral process by encouraging them to register and exercising their constitutional right to vote.”
More than 70 groups — including major Latino rights organizations UnidosUS Action, America’s Voice and MALDEF — sent a letter Friday night to Davis and two other TelevisaUnivision executives who attended the meeting with Trump that described the interview as “a betrayal of trust.”
“We demand Univision conduct a thorough internal review, take corrective measures, and reaffirm its commitment to unbiased reporting and to keeping the Latino community informed and up-to-date with facts and truth,” the letter reads. “Unfiltered, unaddressed and unrestricted disinformation does a disservice to all communities in the U.S. and will destroy Univision’s reputation as a credible network that informs an important electorate.”
The Hispanic Federation, a network of Latino groups, has also separately requested a meeting with Univision executives to discuss their concerns about the Trump interview, according to a spokesperson for the group.
The all-Democratic Congressional Hispanic Caucus has also drafted a letter, which is likely to be sent to Univision in the coming days, asking Davis to meet with members of Congress about the journalistic standards of the network, according to a congressional staffer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the effort. The draft letter, which was shared with The Post, describes a congressional interest in addressing misinformation and disinformation in the Latino community.
Isaac Lee — the chief news officer at Univision during the 2016 campaign when the network clashed with Trump — said he had confidence that the journalists at Univision in Miami would cover the coming presidential race properly. The Trump interview had been conducted by a Mexico City-based anchor for Televisa, Enrique Acevedo, who previously worked in the United States for Univision.
“I don’t think that one interview with Enrique can determine how the campaign is going to be covered and how Latinos are going to get their information,” Lee said. “And from the people I know at Univision News, and I know all of them, I trust that their heart and their mind is in the right place.”
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Outrage against Univision grows after Trump interview
Los Angeles Times (archive.ph)
By Hannah Wiley and Julia Wick
2023-11-19 22:25:19GMT
Univision has found itself at the center of a growing controversy after a recent interview with former President Trump that critics have blasted as too friendly.
The interview that aired Nov. 9 was noticeably warm, and Trump received little pushback as he gave false or misleading statements on border security and immigration policies he instituted as president.
Backlash from certain corners of the Latino community was swift, including calls for more balanced reporting and an outright boycott of the television network ahead of the 2024 election.
Latinos are considered a crucial voting bloc — and largely up for grabs — in next year’s election, likely to be a rematch between Trump and President Biden. Although Latino voters have historically favored Democrats, the Republican Party in recent years has made significant progress in courting their votes.
The exclusive interview with Trump therefore raised significant alarms within the Democratic Party and its allies that the leading Republican candidate was making unchecked claims to important swing voters.
Actor John Leguizamo posted a video to his 1 million Instagram followers Thursday criticizing the Spanish-language media company for “softballing Trump” and reportedly canceling ads for Biden. He said the television network has become “MAGA-vision.”
He implored fellow entertainers, athletes, activists and politicians to join him in boycotting the network until it reinstated “parity, and equality and equity” between the presidential candidates. The television network has also requested an interview with Biden, according to the Washington Post.
The more-than-hourlong interview with Trump was conducted by Enrique Acevedo, an anchor from Mexican network Televisa who is not a Univision journalist. The two media groups merged last year. Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner reportedly helped organize the interview.
“All you have to do is look at the owners of Univision,” Trump said in the first few minutes of the interview when asked about Latino voters and recent polls showing him defeating Biden in 2024. “They’re unbelievable entrepreneurial people, and they like me.”
“They want to see security,” Trump added. “They want to have a border.”
During the interview, Trump made questionable claims that the partial wall built along the southern border was made possible by Mexico providing thousands of soldiers “free of charge,” and that former President Obama laid the groundwork for the controversial policy at the border to deter illegal crossings that became known as the family-separation crisis. Acevedo did not push back on either claim.
“It wasn’t just a friendly interview. It was an embarrassing 1-hour puff-piece with lots of smiles and no pushback with a guy who relished in attacking, belittling and otherizing Latinos and Latin American immigrants,” Ana Navarro-Cárdenas, a prominent Nicaraguan American political strategist and commentator, said on the platform X, the company formerly known as Twitter.
León Krauze, a veteran news anchor for Univision, has since resigned from the network. He did not provide a reason for his departure.
State Sen. Susan Rubio (D-Baldwin Park), a member of the California Latino Legislative Caucus who is running for Congress, said she knew many other Latino leaders who were “personally upset” about the interview.
Rubio said she was “appalled” at how the former president “was allowed to just continue to spew lies and go unchecked” during the conversation. She called the interview “an insult to our entire Latino community.”
The network is “absolutely influential” in households like hers, she said, describing it as a news source she and her Spanish-speaking parents view as trusted and unbiased.
“Our community relies on this information to be truthful. They rely on this source that has been trusted by the Latino community for many, many generations,” she said. “They should have done a better job of making sure that our community is not lied to.”
The Congressional Hispanic Caucus plans to send a letter to the television network requesting a meeting with its chief executive, Wade Davis, and calling for stronger guardrails against disinformation, according to a draft copy of the letter reviewed by The Times.
More than 70 organizations — including prominent Latino groups such as the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, America’s Voice and the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights — signed an open letter to Davis and other TelevisaUnivision executives, sharply criticizing the interview.
The letter, first reported by the Post, asks that the network “conduct a thorough internal review, take corrective measures, and reaffirm its commitment to unbiased reporting and to keeping the Latino community informed and up-to-date with facts and truth,” according to a copy reviewed by The Times.
The controversy is more complicated than what it seems, said Mike Madrid, a GOP political consultant who has a forthcoming book called “The Latino Century: How America’s Largest Minority is Shaping Our Democracy.”
Madrid, who is a vocal critic of Trump, said the objections to the interview are reflective of how the Democratic Party and other left-leaning organizations have taken Latino voters for granted — and relied on the television network to promote their candidates and policies for decades.
Since the late 1980s, Democrats have banked on Latino voters to win elections, Madrid said. But over the last decade, Democrats have begun “hemorrhaging” second- and third-generation Latino voters who are U.S.-born and English-dominant speakers.
Madrid doesn’t dispute that the interview with Trump may have been biased or too cozy, but he said it demonstrates the media company’s shift toward the middle and, therefore, a new Latino audience.
“Where were they for the past 30 years when the Democratic Party was getting softball interviews? The Democrats have taken this base vote for granted. They assumed it was there and Univision would always be in their corner, would always be championing them and advocating for their candidates and policies,” he said. “When you’ve been the beneficiary of media bias, objectivity sounds like betrayal. That’s what’s going on.”
Instead of promoting a boycott of the network, which Madrid called “absolute madness,” Democrats should adjust their strategy and start courting Latino voters on a variety of issues, such as the economy and jobs, rather than just immigration.
“The Democrats have to figure this out very quick that going to war is not in their best interest,” he said. “They are going to have to learn to fight for this vote, when they haven’t for decades. ... And they have less than a year to figure this out.”
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Hispanic conservatives defend Univision amid backlash over Trump interview
The Washington Post (archive.ph)
By Azi Paybarah
2023-11-21 15:10:24GMT
A group of Hispanic conservative leaders sent a letter to Univision expressing support for its recent interview with former president Donald Trump, which has garnered growing criticism over its journalistic standards by a large and influential Spanish-language network ahead of next year’s presidential election.
The Nov. 7 interview also touched off a call to boycott the network and prompted the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, all of whose members are Democrats, to prepare a letter requesting a meeting with the network to discuss its journalism. That move is now drawing its own backlash from conservatives.
“If sent, this letter would constitute a direct attack on a free and independent press and a form of electoral interference,” the conservatives wrote in the letter dated Monday, a copy of which was provided to The Washington Post. “Members of Congress have no right to question or challenge which political candidates you interview or how you interview them.”
Alfonso Aguilar, director of Hispanic Engagement at the American Principles Project and the main drafter of the letter, told The Post his goal is to send a message that Univision “shouldn’t be deterred in providing equal access to conservative and Republican voices.” Aguilar asserted that Univision’s reporters aired what he labeled as biased reports for years but the Hispanic Congressional Caucus was silent because they “were siding with Democrats.”
Others who signed the letter include Mike González, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation; Catalina Stubbe, director of Hispanic outreach for Moms for Liberty; and Mercedes Schlapp, a senior fellow at the CPAC Foundation.
“The folks at Univision will recognize our names,” Aguilar told The Post, saying he and the others on the letter have appeared on air regularly there for years.
Representatives for Univision did not immediately respond to emails seeking comment.
The debate over Univision’s handling of the Trump interview comes just as some early public polling shows President Biden struggling to maintain his traditionally high levels of support from Black and Hispanic voters.
The interview also marked a dramatic turnabout after Trump’s long history of tension with the network. In 2015, Trump ejected Univision anchor Jorge Ramos from a news conference. Later Univision backed out of a contract with Trump’s company to air the Miss Universe contest, leading to a lawsuit that was settled out of court in 2016. In 2020, Trump called Univision “a leftist propaganda machine and a mouthpiece of the Democrat Party.”
The change in Trump’s relationship with Univision comes not long after a change in the network’s ownership. In 2021 Univision merged with the Mexican media company Grupo Televisa, which has long fostered a close relationship with Mexican political leaders.
Earlier this month, the network landed an interview with the former president and recorded it in his Mar-a-Lago Club in Florida. The interview was arranged with the help of Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and attended by a trio of senior executives at Univision’s parent company. When asked about Hispanic voters, Trump said in the interview, “All you have to do is look at the owners of Univision. They’re unbelievable entrepreneurial people, and they like me.”
Just before that interview, the network announced a new policy of preventing opposition advertising during single-candidate interviews and canceled a booking with a Biden spokeswoman to respond to the Trump interview on a later news broadcast.
Univision’s interview with Trump alarmed Democrats and some journalists inside the network. An anchor at Univision in Miami, León Krauze, abruptly separated from the network less than a week after the interview aired; neither he nor the network said why.
Comedian John Leguizamo posted a message to his 1 million followers on Instagram, “I am asking all my brothers and sisters who are actors, artists, politicians, activists to not go on Univision.” Univision, he said, “has become MAGAvision,” referring to Trump’s campaign slogan, Make America Great Again.
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The open letter (archive.org) from Dem propaganda groups:
November 17, 2023
Mr. Wade Davis, CEO, TelevisaUnivision
Mr. Alfonso de Angoitia Noriega, Co-CEO, TelevisaUnivision Mexico
Mr. Bernardo Gomez Martinez, Co-CEO, TelevisaUnivision Mexico
Dear Mr. Davis, Mr. de Angoitia & Mr. Gomez,
Univision has played a unique and important role in the Latino community as an integral source of information. By its own account, Univision’s mission is to “inform and empower” the Latino community, and it is that mission that has enabled it to become a trusted source for news among millions of Hispanics. The confidence bestowed on Univision is built on the
understanding that the network is committed to telling the real story about Hispanics in the U.S. while adhering to the highest journalistic standards and reporting integrity, and doing what true journalists do best — speaking truth to power.
This trust has been betrayed. It is beyond alarming to learn that Univision’s leadership is giving former president Donald Trump— the most anti-Latino and anti-immigrant president in modern American history— unquestioned access and allowed him to spread falsehoods unchecked.
As we indicated in our assessment of his early presidency, former President Trump pursued an extreme agenda detrimental to the Latino community, aimed at reducing access to healthcare, targeting immigrants, exacerbating environmental harm, and drastically slashing federal funding for domestic programs. He also called Mexican immigrants “rapists” and drug smugglers, used racist rhetoric echoed by a domestic terrorist who murdered members of our community in El Paso, and separated immigrant kids from their parents among many other harmful and dangerous words and deeds.
Furthermore, as a recent New York Times article detailed, Trump's second term would not only turbocharge the failed xenophobic policies that bred cruelty, but would fundamentally change who we are as a nation. He is now pledging to bring more hate and division with plans for rounding up millions of undocumented immigrants, mass detentions and mass deportations. Trump would revive family separations, reinstate the Muslim ban and take away birth-right citizenship. These policies will inflict harm on all communities and our entire economy and specially on Latino families, the very audience Univision purports to serve.
Our communities know the consequences of a press corps that is tainted by overt political and business interests, and the pernicious outcome of an electorate kept in the dark. Many of our own families had to escape political persecution and a crackdown on the free press. The role of the press in a democracy is paramount and critical so that the government is accountable to the people. Media functions as a watchdog, informs citizens, and sounds the alarm on corruption, criminality and wrongdoing. With disinformation on the rise, and bad actors targeting our communities, we cannot afford to have one of the most powerful media companies for Hispanics fall short of the highest journalistic standards.
The Latino community expects transparent and unbiased reporting, free from external influence. Upholding the principles of journalism, including fact-checking, balanced reporting, and avoiding sensationalism or free-passes on the tough issues, are all essential for the credibility and trustworthiness of Univision.
We demand Univision conduct a thorough internal review, take corrective measures, and
reaffirm its commitment to unbiased reporting and to keeping the Latino community informed and up-to-date with facts and truth. Unfiltered, unaddressed and unrestricted disinformation does a disservice to all communities in the U.S. and will destroy Univision’s reputation as a credible network that informs an important electorate.
Sincerely,
César J. Blanco, Texas State Senator - SD 29
Cecilia Gonzales, Nevada state assemblywoman
Selena Torres, Nevada State Assemblywoman
National
AFGE National HISCO legislative subcommittee chair
Alianza Americas
America's Voice
American Federation of Government Employees National Hispanic Coalition Chair
Autnonomy Strategies
CASA
CASA in Action
Catalist
Center for American Progress
Center for Common Ground
Climate Power En Accion
DemCast USA
Democratic Messaging Project
Fourth Branch Action
Greenpeace USA
Immigrant Legal Resource Center
Immigrants Rising
Immigration Hub
Jean-Michel Cousteau's Ocean Futures Society
La Mesa Boricua
Labor Council for Latin American Advancement
Latino Political Avenue
Local Majority
Make the Road Action
MALDEF (Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund)
MANA, A National Latina Organization
Mi Familia Vota
MomsRising
MountainGem Advocacy & Communications
MoveOn
National Conference of Puerto Rican Women, inc
National Hispanic Council on Aging
National Hispanic Foundation for the Arts
National Hispanic Leadership Agenda
National Hispanic Media Coalition
National Immigration Law Center
National Partnership for New Americans
NextGen America
NILC Immigrant Justice Fund
People Power United
Presente.org
Pulso
Secure Elections Network
Social Security Works
The Media and Democracy Project
UnidosUS Action Fund
United States Hispanic Leadership Institute
United We Dream
Venezuelan American Caucus
Voto Latino
State and Local
ACLU People Power Fairfax
Alianza for Progress
Alliance San Diego
Avondale ACTion
Centreville Immigration Forum
Coalición de Derechos Humanos
Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (CHIRLA)
Culinary Union
East Area Progressive Democrats (EAPD)
FLIC Votes
Florida Rising
Florida Watch
Hispanic Media
Just Neighbors
La Union del Pueblo Entero
Latina Initiative of Colorado
LUCHA
LULAC Florida
LUPE Votes
Mesa de trabajo NY/NJ
Miami Freedom Project
Nevada Latino Legislative Caucus
Nevada State AFL-CIO
NH Alliance for Immigrants and Refugees
Organización Hijos de Lívingston
Poder NC Action
Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada Action
Regalias Digitales LLC
SEIU- United Service Workers West
Ankura
Catalino Productions
marcoportales.com
The Washington Post (archive.ph)
By Michael Scherer
2023-11-19 04:39:09GMT
The nation’s largest Spanish-language media company, Univision, faced growing backlash Friday for its handling of a recent interview with former president Donald Trump, as major Latino advocacy groups delivered a letter of protest to the network’s executives and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus prepared to request a meeting with the network.
Actor and comedian John Leguizamo, who recently took a turn as host of Comedy Central’s “The Daily Show,” also posted a video on Instagram on Thursday night calling for a boycott of the network until it stopped its rejection of Biden ads, some of which were canceled just before the Trump interview aired.
“I am asking all my brothers and sisters who are actors, artists, politicians, activists to not go on Univision,” he said in a message in English and Spanish.
The pushback comes after a Nov. 7 interview with Trump at his Mar-a-Lago Club in Florida that was arranged with the help of Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and attended by a trio of senior executives at Univision’s parent company. The interview was notable for its gracious tone, lack of follow-up questions and Trump’s assertion in the first minutes about owners of the network.
“They like me,” Trump said.
It’s a sharp contrast to the long history of tension between Trump and Univision — a fact that alarmed both Democrats and journalists inside Univision.
The network, which has said it has also requested an interview with President Biden, announced a new policy of preventing opposition advertising during single-candidate interviews shortly before the Trump interview aired. The network also canceled a booking with a Biden spokeswoman to respond to the interview on a subsequent news broadcast.
A top anchor at Univision in Miami, León Krauze, who helmed the late-night newscast, announced he had abruptly separated from the network Wednesday, less than a week after the interview aired. Neither Krauze nor the network offered a reason for the separation in their statements about the split.
Joaquin Blaya, a former president of Univision who created its signature news show in the late 1980s, told The Washington Post in an interview this week that he worried the network had moved away from its founding mission.
“I am not surprised that someone who is a serious journalist like León Krauze would not be the kind of journalist that they want there,” Blaya said. “They are different times. It is not good what is happening there.”
Blaya — who hired the network’s most famous anchor, Jorge Ramos — later ran Telemundo, the other major Spanish-language network in the United States. He said the Trump interview this month was a step back for Univision towards a journalistic approach he associated with some major broadcasters in Mexico. The Mexican media company Grupo Televisa, which has long had a close relationship with political power brokers in that country, recently merged with the owners of Univision to take joint control of the company.
“This was Mexican-style news coverage, a repudiation of the concept of separation of business and news,” Blaya said of the Trump interview. “What I saw there was batting practice, someone dropping balls for him to hit out of the park. I think it was an embarrassment.”
Wade Davis, one of the TelevisaUnivision executives who attended the Mar-a-Lago meeting, sent a note to U.S. staff this week addressing the controversy caused by the Trump interview.
“Our goal is to cover candidates from all political parties — Democrats, Republicans and Independents — and to assure Hispanics of the most comprehensive access to information that will help them make educated decisions at the ballot box,” Davis wrote. “Our mission is to make Latinos a vital part of our electoral process by encouraging them to register and exercising their constitutional right to vote.”
More than 70 groups — including major Latino rights organizations UnidosUS Action, America’s Voice and MALDEF — sent a letter Friday night to Davis and two other TelevisaUnivision executives who attended the meeting with Trump that described the interview as “a betrayal of trust.”
“We demand Univision conduct a thorough internal review, take corrective measures, and reaffirm its commitment to unbiased reporting and to keeping the Latino community informed and up-to-date with facts and truth,” the letter reads. “Unfiltered, unaddressed and unrestricted disinformation does a disservice to all communities in the U.S. and will destroy Univision’s reputation as a credible network that informs an important electorate.”
The Hispanic Federation, a network of Latino groups, has also separately requested a meeting with Univision executives to discuss their concerns about the Trump interview, according to a spokesperson for the group.
The all-Democratic Congressional Hispanic Caucus has also drafted a letter, which is likely to be sent to Univision in the coming days, asking Davis to meet with members of Congress about the journalistic standards of the network, according to a congressional staffer, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly about the effort. The draft letter, which was shared with The Post, describes a congressional interest in addressing misinformation and disinformation in the Latino community.
Isaac Lee — the chief news officer at Univision during the 2016 campaign when the network clashed with Trump — said he had confidence that the journalists at Univision in Miami would cover the coming presidential race properly. The Trump interview had been conducted by a Mexico City-based anchor for Televisa, Enrique Acevedo, who previously worked in the United States for Univision.
“I don’t think that one interview with Enrique can determine how the campaign is going to be covered and how Latinos are going to get their information,” Lee said. “And from the people I know at Univision News, and I know all of them, I trust that their heart and their mind is in the right place.”
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Outrage against Univision grows after Trump interview
Los Angeles Times (archive.ph)
By Hannah Wiley and Julia Wick
2023-11-19 22:25:19GMT
Univision has found itself at the center of a growing controversy after a recent interview with former President Trump that critics have blasted as too friendly.
The interview that aired Nov. 9 was noticeably warm, and Trump received little pushback as he gave false or misleading statements on border security and immigration policies he instituted as president.
Backlash from certain corners of the Latino community was swift, including calls for more balanced reporting and an outright boycott of the television network ahead of the 2024 election.
Latinos are considered a crucial voting bloc — and largely up for grabs — in next year’s election, likely to be a rematch between Trump and President Biden. Although Latino voters have historically favored Democrats, the Republican Party in recent years has made significant progress in courting their votes.
The exclusive interview with Trump therefore raised significant alarms within the Democratic Party and its allies that the leading Republican candidate was making unchecked claims to important swing voters.
Actor John Leguizamo posted a video to his 1 million Instagram followers Thursday criticizing the Spanish-language media company for “softballing Trump” and reportedly canceling ads for Biden. He said the television network has become “MAGA-vision.”
He implored fellow entertainers, athletes, activists and politicians to join him in boycotting the network until it reinstated “parity, and equality and equity” between the presidential candidates. The television network has also requested an interview with Biden, according to the Washington Post.
The more-than-hourlong interview with Trump was conducted by Enrique Acevedo, an anchor from Mexican network Televisa who is not a Univision journalist. The two media groups merged last year. Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner reportedly helped organize the interview.
“All you have to do is look at the owners of Univision,” Trump said in the first few minutes of the interview when asked about Latino voters and recent polls showing him defeating Biden in 2024. “They’re unbelievable entrepreneurial people, and they like me.”
“They want to see security,” Trump added. “They want to have a border.”
During the interview, Trump made questionable claims that the partial wall built along the southern border was made possible by Mexico providing thousands of soldiers “free of charge,” and that former President Obama laid the groundwork for the controversial policy at the border to deter illegal crossings that became known as the family-separation crisis. Acevedo did not push back on either claim.
“It wasn’t just a friendly interview. It was an embarrassing 1-hour puff-piece with lots of smiles and no pushback with a guy who relished in attacking, belittling and otherizing Latinos and Latin American immigrants,” Ana Navarro-Cárdenas, a prominent Nicaraguan American political strategist and commentator, said on the platform X, the company formerly known as Twitter.
León Krauze, a veteran news anchor for Univision, has since resigned from the network. He did not provide a reason for his departure.
State Sen. Susan Rubio (D-Baldwin Park), a member of the California Latino Legislative Caucus who is running for Congress, said she knew many other Latino leaders who were “personally upset” about the interview.
Rubio said she was “appalled” at how the former president “was allowed to just continue to spew lies and go unchecked” during the conversation. She called the interview “an insult to our entire Latino community.”
The network is “absolutely influential” in households like hers, she said, describing it as a news source she and her Spanish-speaking parents view as trusted and unbiased.
“Our community relies on this information to be truthful. They rely on this source that has been trusted by the Latino community for many, many generations,” she said. “They should have done a better job of making sure that our community is not lied to.”
The Congressional Hispanic Caucus plans to send a letter to the television network requesting a meeting with its chief executive, Wade Davis, and calling for stronger guardrails against disinformation, according to a draft copy of the letter reviewed by The Times.
More than 70 organizations — including prominent Latino groups such as the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, America’s Voice and the Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights — signed an open letter to Davis and other TelevisaUnivision executives, sharply criticizing the interview.
The letter, first reported by the Post, asks that the network “conduct a thorough internal review, take corrective measures, and reaffirm its commitment to unbiased reporting and to keeping the Latino community informed and up-to-date with facts and truth,” according to a copy reviewed by The Times.
The controversy is more complicated than what it seems, said Mike Madrid, a GOP political consultant who has a forthcoming book called “The Latino Century: How America’s Largest Minority is Shaping Our Democracy.”
Madrid, who is a vocal critic of Trump, said the objections to the interview are reflective of how the Democratic Party and other left-leaning organizations have taken Latino voters for granted — and relied on the television network to promote their candidates and policies for decades.
Since the late 1980s, Democrats have banked on Latino voters to win elections, Madrid said. But over the last decade, Democrats have begun “hemorrhaging” second- and third-generation Latino voters who are U.S.-born and English-dominant speakers.
Madrid doesn’t dispute that the interview with Trump may have been biased or too cozy, but he said it demonstrates the media company’s shift toward the middle and, therefore, a new Latino audience.
“Where were they for the past 30 years when the Democratic Party was getting softball interviews? The Democrats have taken this base vote for granted. They assumed it was there and Univision would always be in their corner, would always be championing them and advocating for their candidates and policies,” he said. “When you’ve been the beneficiary of media bias, objectivity sounds like betrayal. That’s what’s going on.”
Instead of promoting a boycott of the network, which Madrid called “absolute madness,” Democrats should adjust their strategy and start courting Latino voters on a variety of issues, such as the economy and jobs, rather than just immigration.
“The Democrats have to figure this out very quick that going to war is not in their best interest,” he said. “They are going to have to learn to fight for this vote, when they haven’t for decades. ... And they have less than a year to figure this out.”
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Hispanic conservatives defend Univision amid backlash over Trump interview
The Washington Post (archive.ph)
By Azi Paybarah
2023-11-21 15:10:24GMT
A group of Hispanic conservative leaders sent a letter to Univision expressing support for its recent interview with former president Donald Trump, which has garnered growing criticism over its journalistic standards by a large and influential Spanish-language network ahead of next year’s presidential election.
The Nov. 7 interview also touched off a call to boycott the network and prompted the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, all of whose members are Democrats, to prepare a letter requesting a meeting with the network to discuss its journalism. That move is now drawing its own backlash from conservatives.
“If sent, this letter would constitute a direct attack on a free and independent press and a form of electoral interference,” the conservatives wrote in the letter dated Monday, a copy of which was provided to The Washington Post. “Members of Congress have no right to question or challenge which political candidates you interview or how you interview them.”
Alfonso Aguilar, director of Hispanic Engagement at the American Principles Project and the main drafter of the letter, told The Post his goal is to send a message that Univision “shouldn’t be deterred in providing equal access to conservative and Republican voices.” Aguilar asserted that Univision’s reporters aired what he labeled as biased reports for years but the Hispanic Congressional Caucus was silent because they “were siding with Democrats.”
Others who signed the letter include Mike González, a senior fellow at the Heritage Foundation; Catalina Stubbe, director of Hispanic outreach for Moms for Liberty; and Mercedes Schlapp, a senior fellow at the CPAC Foundation.
“The folks at Univision will recognize our names,” Aguilar told The Post, saying he and the others on the letter have appeared on air regularly there for years.
Representatives for Univision did not immediately respond to emails seeking comment.
The debate over Univision’s handling of the Trump interview comes just as some early public polling shows President Biden struggling to maintain his traditionally high levels of support from Black and Hispanic voters.
The interview also marked a dramatic turnabout after Trump’s long history of tension with the network. In 2015, Trump ejected Univision anchor Jorge Ramos from a news conference. Later Univision backed out of a contract with Trump’s company to air the Miss Universe contest, leading to a lawsuit that was settled out of court in 2016. In 2020, Trump called Univision “a leftist propaganda machine and a mouthpiece of the Democrat Party.”
The change in Trump’s relationship with Univision comes not long after a change in the network’s ownership. In 2021 Univision merged with the Mexican media company Grupo Televisa, which has long fostered a close relationship with Mexican political leaders.
Earlier this month, the network landed an interview with the former president and recorded it in his Mar-a-Lago Club in Florida. The interview was arranged with the help of Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner and attended by a trio of senior executives at Univision’s parent company. When asked about Hispanic voters, Trump said in the interview, “All you have to do is look at the owners of Univision. They’re unbelievable entrepreneurial people, and they like me.”
Just before that interview, the network announced a new policy of preventing opposition advertising during single-candidate interviews and canceled a booking with a Biden spokeswoman to respond to the Trump interview on a later news broadcast.
Univision’s interview with Trump alarmed Democrats and some journalists inside the network. An anchor at Univision in Miami, León Krauze, abruptly separated from the network less than a week after the interview aired; neither he nor the network said why.
Comedian John Leguizamo posted a message to his 1 million followers on Instagram, “I am asking all my brothers and sisters who are actors, artists, politicians, activists to not go on Univision.” Univision, he said, “has become MAGAvision,” referring to Trump’s campaign slogan, Make America Great Again.
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The open letter (archive.org) from Dem propaganda groups:
November 17, 2023
Mr. Wade Davis, CEO, TelevisaUnivision
Mr. Alfonso de Angoitia Noriega, Co-CEO, TelevisaUnivision Mexico
Mr. Bernardo Gomez Martinez, Co-CEO, TelevisaUnivision Mexico
Dear Mr. Davis, Mr. de Angoitia & Mr. Gomez,
Univision has played a unique and important role in the Latino community as an integral source of information. By its own account, Univision’s mission is to “inform and empower” the Latino community, and it is that mission that has enabled it to become a trusted source for news among millions of Hispanics. The confidence bestowed on Univision is built on the
understanding that the network is committed to telling the real story about Hispanics in the U.S. while adhering to the highest journalistic standards and reporting integrity, and doing what true journalists do best — speaking truth to power.
This trust has been betrayed. It is beyond alarming to learn that Univision’s leadership is giving former president Donald Trump— the most anti-Latino and anti-immigrant president in modern American history— unquestioned access and allowed him to spread falsehoods unchecked.
As we indicated in our assessment of his early presidency, former President Trump pursued an extreme agenda detrimental to the Latino community, aimed at reducing access to healthcare, targeting immigrants, exacerbating environmental harm, and drastically slashing federal funding for domestic programs. He also called Mexican immigrants “rapists” and drug smugglers, used racist rhetoric echoed by a domestic terrorist who murdered members of our community in El Paso, and separated immigrant kids from their parents among many other harmful and dangerous words and deeds.
Furthermore, as a recent New York Times article detailed, Trump's second term would not only turbocharge the failed xenophobic policies that bred cruelty, but would fundamentally change who we are as a nation. He is now pledging to bring more hate and division with plans for rounding up millions of undocumented immigrants, mass detentions and mass deportations. Trump would revive family separations, reinstate the Muslim ban and take away birth-right citizenship. These policies will inflict harm on all communities and our entire economy and specially on Latino families, the very audience Univision purports to serve.
Our communities know the consequences of a press corps that is tainted by overt political and business interests, and the pernicious outcome of an electorate kept in the dark. Many of our own families had to escape political persecution and a crackdown on the free press. The role of the press in a democracy is paramount and critical so that the government is accountable to the people. Media functions as a watchdog, informs citizens, and sounds the alarm on corruption, criminality and wrongdoing. With disinformation on the rise, and bad actors targeting our communities, we cannot afford to have one of the most powerful media companies for Hispanics fall short of the highest journalistic standards.
The Latino community expects transparent and unbiased reporting, free from external influence. Upholding the principles of journalism, including fact-checking, balanced reporting, and avoiding sensationalism or free-passes on the tough issues, are all essential for the credibility and trustworthiness of Univision.
We demand Univision conduct a thorough internal review, take corrective measures, and
reaffirm its commitment to unbiased reporting and to keeping the Latino community informed and up-to-date with facts and truth. Unfiltered, unaddressed and unrestricted disinformation does a disservice to all communities in the U.S. and will destroy Univision’s reputation as a credible network that informs an important electorate.
Sincerely,
César J. Blanco, Texas State Senator - SD 29
Cecilia Gonzales, Nevada state assemblywoman
Selena Torres, Nevada State Assemblywoman
National
AFGE National HISCO legislative subcommittee chair
Alianza Americas
America's Voice
American Federation of Government Employees National Hispanic Coalition Chair
Autnonomy Strategies
CASA
CASA in Action
Catalist
Center for American Progress
Center for Common Ground
Climate Power En Accion
DemCast USA
Democratic Messaging Project
Fourth Branch Action
Greenpeace USA
Immigrant Legal Resource Center
Immigrants Rising
Immigration Hub
Jean-Michel Cousteau's Ocean Futures Society
La Mesa Boricua
Labor Council for Latin American Advancement
Latino Political Avenue
Local Majority
Make the Road Action
MALDEF (Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund)
MANA, A National Latina Organization
Mi Familia Vota
MomsRising
MountainGem Advocacy & Communications
MoveOn
National Conference of Puerto Rican Women, inc
National Hispanic Council on Aging
National Hispanic Foundation for the Arts
National Hispanic Leadership Agenda
National Hispanic Media Coalition
National Immigration Law Center
National Partnership for New Americans
NextGen America
NILC Immigrant Justice Fund
People Power United
Presente.org
Pulso
Secure Elections Network
Social Security Works
The Media and Democracy Project
UnidosUS Action Fund
United States Hispanic Leadership Institute
United We Dream
Venezuelan American Caucus
Voto Latino
State and Local
ACLU People Power Fairfax
Alianza for Progress
Alliance San Diego
Avondale ACTion
Centreville Immigration Forum
Coalición de Derechos Humanos
Coalition for Humane Immigrant Rights (CHIRLA)
Culinary Union
East Area Progressive Democrats (EAPD)
FLIC Votes
Florida Rising
Florida Watch
Hispanic Media
Just Neighbors
La Union del Pueblo Entero
Latina Initiative of Colorado
LUCHA
LULAC Florida
LUPE Votes
Mesa de trabajo NY/NJ
Miami Freedom Project
Nevada Latino Legislative Caucus
Nevada State AFL-CIO
NH Alliance for Immigrants and Refugees
Organización Hijos de Lívingston
Poder NC Action
Progressive Leadership Alliance of Nevada Action
Regalias Digitales LLC
SEIU- United Service Workers West
Ankura
Catalino Productions
marcoportales.com
