Immigrant Rights Trump Sex Scandal For Hispanic Media
New America Media, News report, Marcelo Ballvé, Posted: Mar 21, 2008
Editor’s note: The mainstream press in New York went into a feeding frenzy over the Spitzergate sex scandal, but Spanish language news media provided sober and non-judgmental coverage of the sex flap, focusing instead on immigrant rights. NAM contributing editor, Marcello Ballvé reports from New York City..
New York -- Sex scandals and embarrassing revelations have recently shaken New York's political world, providing reporters a feast of innuendo and intrigue. But at least one part of New York's media corps has largely avoided tongue-in-cheek headlines and moralizing remarks.
When compared to its mainstream counterparts, the city's influential Spanish-language news media provided notably sober and non-judgmental coverage of the sex flaps, and here and there even rose to defend disgraced former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer.
On March 12, when Spitzer's career hung in the balance after revelations he was a client for a high-end prostitution ring, the daily Diario de México published a front-page headline reading, "Mexicans Divided on Spitzer Case." Below the photo, which depicted Spitzer alongside his wife, was a caption that read: "His Wife Supports Him." This rather discreet treatment was a marked contrast to the bold headlines and incensed calls for Spitzer's resignation that filled New York's mainstream newspapers and editorial pages the same day.
Many Latinos remember Spitzer as an advocate of driver's licenses for undocumented immigrants, despite the fact that he was forced to abandon this part of his platform after being inaugurated as governor little over a year ago. Generally, Spanish-language media coverage reflected the gratitude of a community that, despite misgivings about a governor's misbehavior, was unwilling to wholly abandon a politician who had sought to advance immigrants' interests at the state capitol.
"The Mexican immigrant community in the state recognizes in Spitzer a great defender of workers' rights and undocumented immigrants," read the article in the March 12 edition of Diario de México. The article also quoted New York-area activist Jorge Hernández, who said he hoped Spitzer would be able to survive the scandal.
On the same day, in the daily El Diario/La Prensa, columnist Gerson Borrero did not go as far as to ask Spitzer to stay in office, but rendered a largely favorable portrait of the former "Sheriff of Wall Street," who was elected largely on his stellar record bringing white-collar corruption and greed to heel. Borrero's column was basically a lament that Spitzer's political demise signified a missed opportunity at reforms. "Spitzer is not one of those politicians which exude the stink of moral and ethical putrefaction ..." wrote Borrero. He said that he voted for Spitzer believing that he "would do more for the exploited and the least powerful. I think that was still the intention of the today downfallen and discredited politician."
On the same day, El Diario/La Prensa also sounded an ambivalent note, noting that Spitzer had appointed several Latino state officials. The editorial acknowledged that the public was offended by Spitzer's behavior, but it said more important than the governor's individual fate were the initiatives he had been pushing that would benefit minorities, including prison reforms, the creation of an endowment for the under-funded state university system, more rights for domestic workers, and a reform to the Rockefeller Drug Laws that "disproportionately funnel blacks and Hispanics to prison."
The editorial also asked whether the howls of outrage at Spitzer were misdirected: "More ink, screen and air-time has been given to Spitzergate than to the 935 lies delivered by the president and his aides that led to the invasion of Iraq."
Meanwhile, the mainstream media continued its pillorying of Spitzer. The New York Times' editorial March 12 was an unabashed lashing. It bluntly berated Spitzer for delaying his resignation while "hiding in his Fifth Avenue apartment." The New York Post and New York Daily News also published, the day before, fiery editorials calling for Spitzer's resignation.
El Diario/La Prensa competes with these two newspapers for bilingual readers. It has the same tabloid format, roughly the same price tag, and the same need to attract readers with its front-page since it relies heavily on newsstand sales.
Still, throughout the scandal, El Diario resisted the vaguely unsavory and sensationally jocose headlines indulged in by competitors. On the first day El Diario/La Prensa's headline was simply "Verguenza," or "Shame," without exclamation points (The New York Post's was "Ho! No!); on the next day the headline was "Día Dos" or "Day Two", and after Spitzer's resignation the main headline read "In the Lions' Pit," in reference to the new governor being thrust into the middle of a difficult budget-centered legislative session.
Of course, consistently raunchy Spanish-language morning radio didn't waste opportunities at cracking jokes about Spitzer's visits with prostitutes. And Spanish-language television stations, as much as mainstream news channels, vied with one another for the best video footage of a grim-faced Spitzer and his wife entering and exiting their apartment. But Spanish-language news anchors were always careful to remind viewers of Spitzer's work on behalf of workers and immigrants, especially his attempt to give driver's licenses to the undocumented.
And on an online forum sponsored by Univision.com, the website of the largest and most influential Spanish-language TV network, viewers were almost evenly divided on whether Spitzer should resign or stay on as New York governor.
But even after Spitzer resigned March 13, the embarrassing revelations didn't end.
Spitzer's successor, Lt. Gov. David Paterson, who was expected to bring order to the state capitol, also dropped a bombshell. Exactly a week after Spitzer's revelations, Paterson and his wife held a joint news conference revealing several extramarital relationships that had nearly ended their marriage. The new governor now faces allegations he used campaign cash to facilitate one affair.
These revelations returned scandal to the front pages of New York's tabloid newspapers. But for free Spanish-language daily Hoy, which also publishes in a tabloid format, the news wasn't important enough to lead the front page the next day, March 19. It instead led the day's edition with the homicide conviction of an abusive Mexican-born stepfather in the death of his young stepdaughter, a case that for months has pulled at the heartstrings of New York Latinos.
The Patersons' mutual infidelities were reduced to a small photo and short teaser toward the front page's edge: "The loves of the state's first couple." The article inside was a wire service report, with a sidebar for person-on-the-street reactions. One interviewee, Bernardo Palombo, an Argentine immigrant, seemed to sum up the newspaper's approach to the new sex flap when he said: "Who cares about the governor's marital problems?"
At least in the Latino press, it appears this month's sex scandal quota already has been filled.
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