Telemundo aired its much-ballyhooed documentary by Spanish journalist Jordi Évola, titled “Pardon the Interruption, Mr. Trump”, which is supposed to break new ground for Telemundo. Unfortunately, Telemundo breaks nothing new and now finds itself occupying well-trodden ground.
As you’ll see below, the premise of the show is laid out within the first minute, by Noticias Telemundo senior anchor José Díaz-Balart and his Univision counterpart Jorge Ramos:
JORDI ÉVOLE: This program will be titled, “Mr. Trump, Pardon the Interruption”. And you two are journalists that have interrupted…
JORGE RAMOS, SENIOR ANCHOR, UNIVISION: Very proudly…
ÉVOLE: ...Mr. Trump.
JOSÉ DíAZ-BALART: With him, it's always this thing about how you ought to be ashamed. You ought to be ashamed of serving the Latino community, you ought to be ashamed of asking a fair, valid, necessary question…
RAMOS: I don’t know how it is in Spain, you could better explain that to us. But here, we have to stand opposite to power. We have to speak on behalf of a community, 60 million Latinos, that is, persons of Latin American origin,that- that don't have a voice, there are only 4 (U.S.) Senators, we should have 20...and if we don’t do…
ÉVOLE: Proportionately, it should be 20?
RAMOS: Yes, because it should be 20% of the population.
DíAZ-BALART: The Anglophone, the American sometimes does not see us. They don't know that we don’t exist. They come to this restaurant, to eat Mexican food, and they gather with their families, their friends...and they don’t know. They don’t see those who are working. They don’t see the dishwashers, the ones who prepare the food. They don’t see those who work in the fields. They don’t see them.
It is as though there are Two Americas in this country.
RAMOS: The (America) in the living room, and the one in the kitchen.
DíAZ-BALART: ...in the kitchen.
RAMOS: And you go into the kitchens, and America works thanks to us. Many people do not like this new America. It is a mixed, multiracial, multicultural, multiethnic America, and Donald Trump precisely reflects that population, mostly traditional and conservative, that doesn’t want America to keep changing so much.
The documentary, for all its hype, was little to write home about: the same old attempted emotional manipulation of Hispanics we’ve seen before, the same old journalistic preening and peacocking, the old same framing of immigration as an identitarian issue, the same old trotting out of celebrities, and the same old spotlighting of left wing politicians.
For balance, there was the ONE Trump supporter/conservative/supporter of immigration enforcement: the border guard, who was clearly set up to be the villain here.
But what set this particular special apart is Telemundo anchor José Díaz-Balart’s soliloquy on “Two Americas”, as if domestic Spanish-language media didn’t have a role in attempting to cleave Hispanic immigrants from the “other America” and didn’t have a vested business interest in the permanence of these two Americas. And for Telemundo to drop this on Hispanic Heritage Month is especially galling.
Telemundo's press release hyped the documentary:
“With this special, Telemundo develops a new standard in Spanish-language journalism. The documentary analyzes the impact the Trump presidency has had on the Latino community, led by Jordi Évole, one of the most relevant and influential Spanish-speaking journalists,” said Luis Fernández, Executive Vice President of Noticias Telemundo.
Unfortunately, Telemundo does not develop any new standard in Spanish-language journalism. Instead, it abandons its “just-the-facts” approach in order to join Univision in the trafficking of racial grievance. For shame.
