Outstanding economic news continues for the nation's largest ethnic minority – Hispanic Americans – with the unemployment rate for this segment of the population remaining at a record-low of 4.2% in May. Yet for the Spanish-language sister network of NBC, Telemundo, this historically low rate was not even worth mentioning on its national evening news.
Instead, completely ignoring the latest jobs numbers from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, anchor José Díaz-Balart chose to share with his audience the evidently more important National Doughnut Day news, the day when “consumers spend 57% more on doughnuts.” Wow! Here was Diaz-Balart:
If you are going to buy doughnuts today you may get them for free. It’s National Doughnut Day and many businesses are giving away the sweet craving, as happens every first Friday in June. Even so, consumers spend 57 percent more on donuts this day. The celebration began in 1938 as a tribute to the volunteers who distributed these rings of bread and sugar to soldiers during the First World War.
Withholding good economic news from their audiences has become something of a custom at both Telemundo and Univision, the top two U.S. Spanish-language television networks that more often than not have ignored the record-setting new lows in Hispanic unemployment that have taken place five times since June of 2018. Also notable – and ignored by both of those networks – is that the Hispanic labor force participation rate increased to 66.2%, from 65.9% the previous month.
CNN en Español, on the other hand, did take the time to cover the latest Hispanic unemployment news during its weekday evening news program, Directo USA. However, although anchor Juan Carlos López read the record 4.2% level correctly in his script, an erroneous 4.5% number appeared on screen.
