By IPS Correspondents
TAMPA, Florida, May 4 2006 (IPS)

When Blanca Gonzalez, a founding member of the Florida-based group Immigrants United for Freedom, was starting to plan Monday’s national boycott in support of undocumented workers a few weeks ago, one of the first contacts she made was with the Spanish-language radio station WQBN-1300 AM in Tampa.

“I knew that the station would help us get the message out that a rally was going to happen,” said Gonzalez.

Marc Vila, WQBN’s vice president and general manager, added that, “We have had many representatives of the (pro-immigration) groups explaining their positions.”

“We have an open mike (microphone) policy where you can hear any opinion on this subject. Our morning drive-time show is a call-in show, so it’s interactive and the response has been unbelievable in the past few weeks,” Vila said.

Gonzalez’s use of WQBN to publicise the event worked – an estimated 7,000 people took to Tampa’s streets on Monday. It was but one example of a trend in recent years – the growing social and political power of Spanish-language radio and television stations as an instrument for social change in the United States.

An old adage is that whenever revolutionary forces in a Latin American country (and elsewhere) want to overthrow the sitting government, one of the first things they do is take over local radio stations so that the forces can make their views known simultaneously to thousands of people.

Perhaps the most appropriate adjective to describe those affiliated with the pro-immigration rallies is peaceful. The day before massive demonstrations took place in major cities around the U.S. almost a month ago, TV anchor-persons for Channels 34, 46, and 54 in Los Angeles (all of which are Spanish-language stations) made an improvised public service announcement urging everybody who was going to participate to do so in a peaceful manner.

Based in New Jersey, Univision is one of the larger U.S.-based media corporations that specialise in owning and operating solely Spanish-language radio and TV stations. A spokesperson told IPS that Univision has 62 TV stations and 69 radio stations throughout the U.S.

The spokesperson also said that Univision treated the immigration assemblies as news and that local news directors of the corporation’s stations were responsible for their coverage of the rallies.

Which leads to the question: How does a Spanish-language radio or TV station, whose target audience is obviously Latinos, maintain journalistic objectivity in its coverage of the issue and not become audio or video propagandists?

“The Clear Channel Corporation was careful not to take a side (on the immigration issue),” said spokeswoman Michelle Clark. Clear Channel owns 1,200 radio stations in the U.S, 31 of which broadcast solely in Spanish. Based in San Antonio, Clear Channel also owns 36 TV stations.

“On Monday (the day of the rallies), some of the (Clear Channel radio stations) dee-jays didn’t speak on the air, as a sign of their respect for what was taking place,” said Clark.

At CNN en Español, the Cable News Network’s Spanish-language division, “there was much talk about what we should call (Monday’s) events. We finally decided on ‘day of protests’,” explained Christopher Crommett, senior vice president of CNN en Español.

There are 130 staff employees at CNN en Español. It has two bureaus, based in Buenos Aires and Mexico City. CNN en Español has a worldwide network of about 50 Spanish- speaking journalists and broadcasts primarily in North and Latin America, although Crommett told IPS that one hour of CNN en Español is seen in Japan and that the organisation also has a sister channel in Spain, CNN+.

“Our standards and practices guidelines prevent our employees from taking a stand on controversial issues. It’s a living, breathing effort. Things come up almost daily that we discuss and ask ourselves, ‘How can we cover this in the best traditions of CNN?'” said Crommett.

Dr. Timothy Smith, an anthropologist and associate director of the Institute of Latin American and Caribbean Studies at the University of South Florida in Tampa, has devoted much of his professional life to becoming immersed in various Latino cultures. His specialties are Central America and Mexico, and three times a year, he travels to Guatemala to do research.

“In my experience in living in the Southwest (Arizona), most of it (exposure to Spanish-language radio and TV stations) was on the local level and emphasised strong family ties and connections. Different media specialise and act on and report on different segments of society,” said Dr. Smith.

He also believes that deconstruction of the media leads people to view it in many ways.

“It so happened that on Sep. 11, 2001 (when New York and Washington were hit by hijacked airliners), I was in Mexico. I knew that I could turn to Mexico TV and get better, less filtered news reports that what was on the American networks. I had access to Fox, CNN, and the BBC through a satellite radio, but I knew that I could turn to the Mexican Spanish-language media to find out what was going on,” Smith added, emphasising that these are his personal views and not those of the University of South Florida..

Jesus Javier, news director of the Spanish-language TV station KRCA-TV in Los Angeles, told IPS that, “This (journalistic objectivity) is something that we’re very concerned about, but when you look at our coverage and compare it to some of the English-language TV networks that show only an anti-immigration view, I feel an obligation to spin the story to show the events in a more positive manner.”

For example, the group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting just slammed CNN’s Lou Dobbs, who has a prominent nightly programme, for his “consistently alarmist” tone on immigration.

“He warns his viewers of Mexican immigrants who see themselves as an ‘army of invaders’ intent upon reannexing parts of the Southwestern U.S. to Mexico, announces that ‘illegal alien smugglers and drug traffickers are on the verge of ruining some of our national treasures’ and declares that ‘the invasion of illegal aliens is threatening the health of many Americans’ through ‘deadly imports’ of diseases like leprosy and malaria,” FAIR reported.

Javier said that KRCA’s rating doubled on Monday, as the station gave hours of coverage to the pro-immigration rallies in Los Angeles. Javier emphasised that “we had people of all views on our newscasts, people who both support and do not support the immigrants.”

Next for the Spanish-language radio and TV stations: a possible May 19 march on Washington, with plans for protestors to demonstrate outside of the White House.

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