Closed Spanish-language television is creating a news desert

from George B. Sanchez-TeloCalMatters

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Univision and Telemundo were constantly on at Suzanne Garcia’s Santa Ana home. For immigrant families like hers, news in Spanish isn’t just news translated from English; it’s news tailored to their experiences, identities, interests and backgrounds, explained Garcia, a professor at Cal State Monterey Bay.

It doesn’t take a bilingual and bicultural education expert like Garcia to understand what it means to communities when those channels suddenly go dark.

KMUV 23, a Telemundo affiliate, was the only local Spanish-language television news station on the Central California coast. it suddenly closed at the end of Septembereliminating one of the main sources of reliable information for viewers dependent on local reporting in their language.

“It’s a huge loss not to have Telemundo,” Garcia said.

While much of the news coverage of the station’s closing has focused on the English-language broadcaster, KION, and the accelerating atrophy of local journalism, there even fewer options left for Hispanics in the region — especially immigrants who are vital to the economy but terrorized by raids on their communities.

The Salinas Valley is known as the salad bowl of the world. Field workers and farms produce more than 371 million pounds of fruits and vegetables. More than half leaf and head lettuce consumed in the United States is grown here.

Almost two-thirds of Monterey County residents are Latino, according to the US Census. More than a quarter of residents were born abroad, and the largest of this group – 102,772 people – are from Latin America.

That’s too many people without a single source of local news in their primary language.

Telemundo and KION are owned by Missouri-based News-Press & Gazette Co., which owns televisions in 10 regions nationwide, including Palm Springs and El Centro.

On September 23 KION published on its website starting at 5 p.m. the same day will begin broadcasting news from KPIX, a San Francisco Bay Area station more than 100 miles away.

KION’s closing came after the region’s two largest newspapers — the Salinas Californian and the Monterey County Herald — had already gone from daily publications to paid news sites.

The collapse of the Californian is over The sunlocal bi-weekly Spanish-language newspaper. And it’s been 20 years since the San Jose Mercury News closed A new worldhis Spanish-language weekly.

Local Spanish-language radio remains, but Sandy Santos, the last producer at KMUV, said there is a difference between those stations and what KMUV offers. Local Spanish-language radio is not properly set up for reporting and fact-finding, she said.

“We have a little radio, but it’s more music and entertainment, not news,” Santos said.

Salinas, like elsewhere, has seen the local news vacuum lead to the rise of social media content creators.

Alejandra Ruiz, a health worker with Mujeres en Acción, said that in the absence of trusted sources and reporting, migrant communities turn to social media for updates on immigration raids and local news. Garcia said even she is starting to do that.

Santos acknowledged that relying on social media for news is the new reality, but “likes” and “shares” are not the same as reported fact.

“It leads to chaos, misinformation and half-truths,” Santos said.

In the meantime, locals will receive television news in Spanish from the Bay Area. Santos said Telemundo’s other Costa Central station north of Los Angeles still exists, but news from Santa Barbara, Santa Maria and Oxnard won’t help those locals.

“I just don’t know how helpful this is to people in Monterey, Salinas or Santa Cruz County,” she said.

Civic engagement and local accountability suffer

The closure of the region’s last local Spanish-language broadcaster will have ramifications beyond media metrics and the commercial value of captive audiences. That can affect voting and civic engagement, Garcia said, especially among mixed-status families where some members are undocumented and others are citizens.

Garcia remembers the television coverage of Proposition 187 in 1994 a voter-approved initiative that sought to turn away undocumented immigrants public education, social services and non-emergency medical care. Los Angeles stations Telemundo and Univision reported on the voting initiative from the perspective and understanding of immigrant communities, she recalled.

Education policy shapes schools, she added, and Monterey County has high rates of English language learners and bilingual students. Residents, including immigrant homes and Hispanic-only homes, should be informed of school policy, including this summer freeze federal funding for migrant education and looming federal budget cuts.

Residents should be aware of their right and duty to advocate for programs that serve themselves and the larger community.

Overall, the loss of local accountability ultimately correlates with a decrease in civic engagement — think voting — and an increase in corruption, studies show. It doesn’t matter what language is spoken. We may soon find out what that looks like for the Hispanic population in Monterey County.

This story was co-published with The Voices of Monterey Bay.

This article was originally published on CalMatters and is republished under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivatives license.