If there is another explanation for what was a stunning exchange between the anchors at the close of Noticiero Univision earlier this week, I'd like to hear it. On April 17, viewers saw an exchange between Jorge Ramos and María Elena Salinas so fundamentally devoid of situational self-awareness that there is no other rational takeaway than an institutional assumption of staggering viewer stupidity.
Here's how anchor María Elena Salinas closed out the newscast - with her best impersonation of a Fox News anchor: We report, YOU DECIDE.
MARIA ELENA SALINAS, NEWS ANCHOR, UNIVISION: All the different points of view have to be given, and each person evaluates.
It should be noted that Salinas' quote here is itself a reaction to Jorge Ramos' reaction to a series of reports filed by correspondent Pedro Ultreras (whose work you last saw here), on life for Mexican and Central American immigrants that participate in Canada's guest worker program.
The reports themselves were pretty straight-up. In a nutshell, Canada's agricultural guest-worker program allows a finite and tightly-tracked number of people to come in and work for up to eight months a year, after which they must return home. There is no right to a pathway to citizenship, nor is there a right to many of Canada's other social programs. This much was factual and Ultreras didn't inject any bias or opinion into his work.
But the anchors, on the other hand, had to inject their two cents' worth after every story. So the last thing viewers saw after these reports and before the newscast signed off was some sort of commentary on how Trump created the conditions that led to this immigrant flight to Canada, how their talents were welcomed North of the Border, and so on. Of course, there was no mention whatsoever of the fact that the United States USED to have a similar program, or of how its subsequent elimination is at the root of today's immigration chaos.
And so it takes a special brand of gall, given everything that has been chronicled since the 2014 inception of systematic content analysis of Univision's principal evening newscast by MRC Latino, for Jorge Ramos or María Elena Salina to suggest - even in jest - that the network reports all sides of a story and allows viewers to decide for themselves. Nothing has changed in the two years since Univision Chief Everything Officer Isaac Lee went to the University of Texas at Austin and said THIS with regard to covering all sides of a story:
ISAAC LEE, CHIEF NEWS/ENTERTAINMENT/DIGITAL OFFICER, UNIVISION: I think if you are an American journalist covering the Second World War, it’s not a problem for you to want the Nazis to lose. And I don’t think you need to be saying ‘Well, you know, the Allied Expeditionary Force Commander says this, and on the other hand the Fuhrer says that.’ I think it’s OK to understand that sometimes you have to be on the right side of the issues in history.
"The right side of the issues in history" is the moral justfication behind Univision's one-sided coverage on issue after issue after issue. Because of the network's commitment to such advocacy journalism, Univision does not reliably report the principal, contested sides and angles of the leading issues in the news, and such failure indicates that the network does not really trust its viewers to judge for themselves and reach their own conclusions. To suggest otherwise on live prime time air - in the face of a massive body of evidence to the contrary - requires a childlike suspension of disbelief and is a grievous insult to the intelligence of those who tune into the network for information.
Going forward, it would be a welcome development indeed for Univision to apply this newly-stated standard to its coverage of EVERY controversial public policy issue in the news. Transparent delivery of facts, contrasting viewpoints and conflicting angles - instead of driving a liberal advocacy agenda. Then, perhaps, there might be a ring of truth to Salinas and Ramos' self-congratulatory statements. But not a second sooner.
Below is a transcript of the above referenced segment as aired on Noticiero Univision on Monday, April 17th, 2017.
JORGE RAMOS, NEWS ANCHOR, UNIVISION: Pedro's series is very interesting because it shows all the points of view about what it would mean to move from the United States to Canada, right?
MARIA ELENA SALINAS, NEWS ANCHOR, UNIVISION: That's it. All the different points of view have to be given, and each person evaluates.
