G. Capuano at MMFA:

Univision’s elDetector project has worked for months to fact-check Donald Trump’s dangerous lies about abortion, immigration, and the January 6 insurrection. During an October 16 Televisa Univision town hall with the former president, journalist Enrique Acevedo — who in 2023 faced criticism for his interview with Trump — will also have the chance to push back against Trump's misinformation by fact-checking the GOP presidential candidate in real time. 

The event will also be an opportunity for Univision to restore trust among its viewers after concerns that the network’s corporate owners, Televisa Univision, have made attempts to become friendly with the former president, with whom the network had cut business ties in 2016 after a series of racist remarks against Mexicans. In 2023, the Washington Post reported that “Trump is treating Univision and its new corporate owners like long-lost friends” and that “he hosted a trio of its executives at Mar-a-Lago” during his interview with Acevedo.   The town hall will broadcast out of Miami and will be followed by a dueling town hall with Vice President Kamala Harris on Thursday, October 10. Univision and its streaming service ViX will air the town halls with a Spanish translation, with the full English-language version available on the Noticias Univision YouTube channel.

[...]

Univision’s elDetector has fact-checked Trump before

Univision’s elDetector, an online Spanish-language fact-checking project launched ahead of the 2016 presidential election, has spent the last several months pushing back against Trump’s anti-immigrant rhetoric, his false and racist attacks against Harris’ identity, his fearmongering about Democrats’ position on abortion, and his distortions about the January 6 insurrection. 

Adrian Carrasquillo at The Bulwark:

EMPLOYEES AT THE SPANISH-LANGUAGE cable mainstay Univision were left distraught earlier this month after the network’s brass decided to run Department of Homeland Security ads warning immigrants that the government will find and deport them. The ads, which are part of a new $200 million campaign Homeland Security unveiled in February, have rankled immigrant-rights groups, who view them as a blunt attempt at fearmongering on the taxpayer dime. Univision itself has covered the ads critically on air. “‘If you don’t leave, we’ll find you and deport you,’—that’s how radical the ad from the DHS Secretary Kristi Noem is,” anchor Andrea Linares said in a February 18 segment. Yet Univision has joined English-language networks in choosing to run the ads on its airwaves. That decision has left journalists inside the network frustrated. It has also increased internal tensions over how Univision has chosen to cover Trump, according to current and former employees. One Univision newsroom leader, who was so upset about the ad airing that they had to be calmed down by a former colleague, argued that the network has changed under the ownership of Televisa, the Mexican telecommunications and broadcasting company. The leader, who spoke on condition of anonymity, recalled that Televisa executives—along with Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner—had a hand in organizing the November 2023 interview of Trump by veteran journalist Enrique Acevedo, who was widely criticized for the gentleness and deference he seemed to offer his divisive subject. “We previously didn’t care what Televisa said, but the Trump interview with Acevedo was coordinated by Televisa, there were Televisa corporate people at that interview,” the Univision source said. “I’ve only known journalism in the States, I haven’t done journalism in Mexico—they take care of whoever is in political power in Mexico—so I just feel that is trickling down in the States.” (After their $4.8 billion merger went through in 2022, the company became TelevisaUnivision, though the network Hispanics have known for decades remains known as Univision.) Acevedo himself works for Televisa, not Univision, which made his selection to conduct the interview more conspicuous to Univision employees. Later in the campaign, as the network moved to soothe ruffled feathers, Acevedo also interviewed President Biden. Local Univision staffers were notified ahead of Trump’s joint speech to Congress on March 4 that the network would be airing the DHS ads that night. Later, some learned the ads had begun airing the day before. Media buyers in touch with Univision told The Bulwark that the DHS ad orders were for English copy with Spanish subtitles and that they are only slated to run through March, at this point. The ads have aired in major TV media markets including Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Miami, Phoenix, Austin, Houston, and Dallas, as well as on radio and digital streaming platforms.

[...] Joaquin Blaya, who helped found the Univision network, served as its president, and hired its most famous anchor, Jorge Ramos, likened the DHS ad campaign to the sort of propaganda official government newspapers would have run in the Soviet Union and other authoritarian states. “I told my wife, this is Pravda, ‘dear leader’ type of stuff,” Blaya told The Bulwark. “I know these are different times, I know they are trying to be more accommodating. But suffice to say, under our leadership, the ad would not have run,” he said. “This is not about being a network to promote breaking laws and regulations—that’s not the point. It’s a network to let Hispanics know their rights within the legal structure of the United States. It’s about knowing your rights and standing up for them.” Univision was not the only Spanish-language network to air the DHS ad. Telemundo did as well. But the reaction at that network was somewhat more muted. That may be because, internally, Telemundo’s coverage of the Trump administration has been perceived in the Spanish-language community as tough but fair, and the network has also traditionally been viewed as an advocate for the Latino community. On February 23, Noticias Telemundo aired a one-hour news special featuring legal, law-enforcement, and immigration experts discussing the changes in federal immigration policy and answering audience questions.

[...] The controversy over the decision to run the DHS ads comes at a difficult time for Spanish-language media companies, which, like their English-language counterparts, have suffered from mass layoffs and a contracting industry—all while facing a retribution-minded Trump administration. There is concern within the networks that Trump could soon go after them more aggressively. The Telemundo news division source worried that the president’s executive order designating English as the country’s official language could lead to Spanish-language networks being targeted for fines, restrictions, or worse if they continue to broadcast in the preferred language of their audience, particularly as Trump uses the FEC as sword and shield against media companies. When the White House held the traditional off-the-record meeting with journalists before Trump’s joint speech to Congress last week, members from both Spanish-language networks were excluded, sparking additional concerns. The exclusion was a break from past years, when those sessions were opened to anchors and White House correspondents from Telemundo and Univision. “He’s degraded the Spanish language,” the Telemundo news division source said. “What does it mean to not be part of an official language in this country? How far can they go? Who are we to say we won’t wake up one day to a pronouncement from the administration that these Spanish-language stations are catering to DEI? Where does he draw the line?”

YouTube TV finds itself in middle of another significant carriage fight, but unlike last month’s dispute with Fox Corp. around fees (which ultimately was resolved with a deal) the new dispute is about something different: Channel tiers, packaging and accessibility. TelevisaUnivision on Tuesday went public with an ad campaign calling out YouTube TV for the dispute, which will see the core…