A recent report by Telemundo anchor José Díaz-Balart seemed like a comedy skit given the subject: “the media’s responsibility in the use of language”. Even the opening sentence of the report gave away his preference for incendiary language, as he explicitly used the word “racist” three words into the feature. By the way, a quick look-up of our files revealed that at Telemundo alone, the term “racist” was used 60 times to describe Trump and/or his Administration between January and August, 2019.
In the above-mentioned Telemundo News report, Díaz-Balart was referring to an article published by the far-left New York Times titled ´How the El Paso Killer Echoed the Incendiary Words of Conservative Media Stars´. To further push the “blame Trump and the conservative media for the El Paso tragedy” rhetoric, Telemundo correspondent Lourdes Hurtado, also warned of the dangerous practice, as seen below:
JOSE DIAZ-BALART, ANCHOR, TELEMUNDO: The racist massacre of El Paso has put the focus on the responsibility of the media in the use of language.
[...]
LOURDES HURTADO, CORRESPONDENT, TELEMUNDO: The representation of immigration as a threat is not something new. But in the era of mass shootings, this inflammatory language could become a real danger.
However, before being so quick to point fingers and blame the President for the Texas shooting tragedy, Telemundo News’ writers could have checked -and reported about- their constant use of provocative and defaming terms like “anti-immigrant”, a label routinely used to deliberately and dishonestly portray measures or statements against illegal immigration as if they were also aimed against legal immigration and legal immigrants in the United States. From January to August of 2019, that term alone made it at least 90 times to the newscasts at Telemundo, Univision and Estrella TV.
Here are just a few examples of this broad-brush at Telemundo:
It is important to note that not only has the language at the Spanish-speaking news networks become increasingly “incendiary” but that the bias has become extreme.
As MRC Latino recently reported after analyzing every evening news story on Univision and Telemundo during a four-month period, the audiences are watching news “that is far more likely to be slanted in a liberal direction than to be balanced or neutral. Out of 812 stories on U.S. politics and policy, more than 70 percent (570) were slanted in a liberal direction, compared with 240 stories (29.6%) that were balanced or neutral. In four months, our analysts found only two stories (0.2%) which conveyed a pro-conservative spin.”
On immigration alone, 81 percent of the stories leaned left, while none — zero — leaned right. Without a doubt, “the obvious liberal tilt on these newscasts has become the near-exclusion of the conservative point of view.” And, hand-in-hand with that view, come the rabble-rousing terms they favor and that, like Hurtado warns, could – and do- become a real danger to those who think differently.
