In 2010, Arizona was temporarily turned into a police state due to a racist law requiring police officers to demand papers proving citizenship or immigration status from people based only on some undefined “reasonable suspicion” that they are in the country unlawfully. More than a decade later, the trauma still lives on for many Latino Arizona residents. Yet this is going to be child’s play compared to what is coming under a potential second Trump term. He and his allies are promising “the largest domestic deportation operation in American history” that will force federal and local law enforcement agencies to conduct large-scale arrests throughout Latino communities across the nation.
But you’d never know it from Trump’s “exclusive interview” last November with journalist Enrique Acevedo on Univision, the largest Spanish-language network in the United States. Acevedo never asked him about it. To be fair, searching through Univision’s videos on Trump, there was nothing I could find on Trump’s hard-line anti-Latino policies. There were plenty of puff pieces to be found, like asking Republicans which veep candidates give Trump the best shot at winning, but not much else.
The network had the perfect opportunity to ask Trump directly about his authoritarian plans, as well as his past atrocities, and didn’t. Of course, Trump still managed to say plenty unintentionally, such as how he would turn the DOJ and FBI into a tool of retaliation and go after political rivals. Instead, however, the interview turned into a Hannity-style love-fest with stupid softball questions like this:
Talking about polls, The New York Times/Siena poll came out this week. It has you with a solid lead in five of the six states that could decide the election, including Arizona, Nevada, Georgia, which was a very contested state the last time around. But it also has you with 42% of Latino voters support. That’s unprecedented for a Republican candidate. What do you think the message is voters are sending with these numbers?
Real hard-hitting journalism, Enrique. Trump, who for years hated Univision for asking tough questions, now professed his love for the network. “All you have to do is look at the owners of Univision. They’re unbelievable entrepreneurial people. And they like me!”
This begs the question: Why do they suddenly support him?
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Univision journalist Jorge Ramos was emblematic of the network’s brand of journalism, as he always asked tough questions. He confronted the dictator of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro, about his country’s humanitarian crisis—and got deported. He challenged every presidential candidate since 1989 on their immigration policy, regardless of party. In 2015, Trump got mad enough to throw Ramos out of his press conference, and later attacked Univision as leftist propaganda. Yet now Trump suddenly sings the network’s praises. Did something change? Yes. A big thing.
In 2022, Univision and Televisa merged to create TelevisaUnivision. The merger was worth $4.8 billion. To understand what is happening at Univision, you need to know about Televisa. It’s owned by one family, the Azcárragas, and has long had a historical association with being a mouthpiece for the ruling political party. Mexico was a quasi-dictatorship that had one-party rule for 71 continuous years under the PRI (Institutional Revolutionary Party, or Partido Revolucionario Institucional).
In 2000, the party finally lost the presidency; yet most local and legislative offices were still held by the PRI. Televisa has been accused of having a symbiotic relationship where they get privileged treatment in exchange for supporting the policies and actions of the government. This was most prominently demonstrated in their coverage of the police repression of Antenco, which holds the distinction as being the most violent repression in Mexican history.
Televisa supported the government action and the governor at the time, PRI party member Enrique Peña Nieto, while excluding any criticism or talking with the activists who were beaten, tortured, and raped. Televisa would go on to strongly promote Peña Nieto for the presidency in 2012. The Guardian revealed documents that suggested that Peña Nieto’s party paid subsidiaries of Televisa for favorable coverage on their network.
Televisa certainly seemed to give him very favorable treatment, televising his romance with a telenovela star and following them on their trip to the Vatican for his engagement announcement. That ensured a spectacle for the wedding:
George W. Grayson, a Mexico scholar at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Va., said the ceremony was designed to create a “Kennedyesque Camelot” image.
“Televisa will make certain that the nuptials thrum the heartstrings of viewers, especially women, whom the PRI is courting.”
The tactic worked, as Peña Nieto won the presidency for the PRI in 2012. (It wasn’t until after that fact that independent journalists not associated with Televisa discovered that the wedding might have been a sham.)
Univision was completely separate from Televisa, both figuratively and literally, until very recently. After the merger, the new leadership wasted no time in making changes. According to MSNBC, they made a lot of “editorial and business decisions” that directly benefit Trump.
Besides the softball interview, Univision preempted regular programming for coverage of a three-hour long Trump rally. Not even Fox News covers Trump rallies anymore. Biden’s team isn’t taking this lying down. They’ve aggressively targeted Latinos, where polls have shown Biden’s support has softened from 2020. Biden traveled to Nevada, Arizona, and even Texas as part of his post-State of the Union push to shore up his base and try to motivate voters. He’s also been running ads like this one in Spanish-speaking markets to remind them what Trump thinks of them:
Biden’s team paid for campaign ads to run during Trump’s Univision interview, but the new Univision leadership not only pulled them at the last minute, but refused to allow any kind of Biden response. Biden’s Hispanic media director, Maca Casado, was scheduled to respond after the interview aired, but was told it was off. Speculation arose that Univision aimed to position itself as a Spanish-language Fox News-style propaganda channel.
The controversy escalated as former executives expressed alarm over the network’s changing direction. The recent leadership signaled a shift toward right-wing editorial control. Catering to right-wing viewers, who obsessively watch right-wing propaganda all day every day, can be great for ratings, but isn’t good for credible journalists. Right after the Trump interview, León Krauze, a veteran news anchor for Univision, resigned from the network.
The involvement of Jared Kushner in brokering the Trump interview added complexity, with accusations of favoritism and concerns about journalistic integrity. Univision employees, including experienced journalists based in Miami, felt sidelined by the assignment, fueling internal discontent. The network’s choice to allocate three days to the interview without conducting any fact-checking prompted skepticism and concern among staff members.
The Trump interview itself created a ton of fallout, with Latino viewers furious that Trump was never once challenged on his lies on border security and immigration policies that he instituted as president. Political commentator and co-host of “The View” Ana Navarro and actor John Leguizamo called for a boycott of Univision, and even The New York Times had to acknowledge the change at Univision:
To even a casual viewer, there is no doubt that Univision has been more friendly to Republicans lately. Conservatives appear more frequently on the air. Coverage of immigration — long the network’s bread-and-butter news — has become more skeptical of President Biden’s policies. Regular programming has been interrupted to cover Mr. Trump’s remarks live — something even Fox News generally avoids. The network’s streaming platform, ViX, has recently introduced several shows with decidedly conservative hosts.
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 TelevisaUnivision executives, sharply criticizing the interview. The Congressional Hispanic Caucus sent a separate letter to the television network requesting a meeting with its chief executive, Wade Davis, to talk about disinformation, but as of this writing there is no record that the meeting ever happened. Hispanic conservatives, however, have defended the interview.
Univision’s pivot occurred amid declining Spanish-language television news audiences and economic uncertainties, mirroring challenges faced by English-language counterparts. As the largest Spanish-language network in the U.S., its shift holds significance for both political parties, impacting a crucial and rapidly growing demographic. An influencer who has lived in Mexico and goes by @masatheartist explained how Televisa partnered with the PRI in Mexico to be their propaganda machine, much in the same way Fox News parrots propaganda for the Republican establishment. He believes they bought Univision because they sensed an opportunity:
They are smelling blood in the water and seeing the birth of another dictatorship. Now they are cozying up to the [GOP] candidate because they know how profitable it was to be the propaganda machine in Mexico.”
For whatever you can say about Fox News, and there is plenty, one thing you cannot say is that they aren’t profitable. In fact, it’s one of the few media outlets that has really made money. Unfortunately, propaganda sells. Meanwhile, real journalistic outfits that work tirelessly to expose corruption, like print media and local channels, have struggled to survive. Newspapers, especially dailies, have cut staff and circulation significantly under financial pressure. Even big players, like The Washington Post, lost $100 million in 2023 and had to cut many staff members and journalists.
Meanwhile, right-wing media outlets that push conspiracy theories and fearmongering have been thriving. Being a mouthpiece for the elite in exchange for profit is an easy decision to make if you have no commitment to journalistic integrity, and there’s certainly a market for a Spanish-language version of Fox News. This couldn’t have happened at a better time for Trump. One of the first things newly installed Republican National Committee co-chair Lara Trump did when she assumed power was scrap plans for minority outreach centers.
Media outlets choosing profitable misinformation over the truth benefits Trump and America’s enemies, but is bad for democracy. So critical is a free and balanced press that it’s the only profession mentioned in the Constitution—specifically in the First Amendment.
But whatever the original plans, UnivisionTelevisa doesn’t have to go this route. To their credit, they have been acutely aware of the immense backlash they received for allowing Trump to lie and insult immigrants. Joe Biden’s team worked quietly behind the scenes to get his own interview with the network. In fact, that interview was conducted at the White House by Enrique Acevedo, the same person who interviewed Trump, and will air Tuesday.
Acevedo has his own reputation to rebuild, but so does Univision. Biden isn’t asking for the same kind of softball interview that Trump got, just a fair one. Univision has a decision to make soon on what kind of network they want to be, and we’ll more than likely find out this week what they decided.
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