The dramatic disconnect between Univision and the audience it purports to serve and know best - the U.S. Spanish-speaking Hispanic population - is especially evident each year during ‘Pride Month’, that time of the year when the nation’s LGBT community struts its stuff.
Despite June 2017 Pew Research Center polling that shows that Hispanic support for same sex marriage (60% support, 36% oppose) is lower than white support (which stands at 64%) and the 62% support among the population as a whole, Univision’s morning show hosts act like those who oppose same sex marriage and the annual national celebrations of the LGBT lifestyle are either invisible or just do not exist.
Watch the banter between Despierta América hosts Francisca Lachapel and Alan Tacher, following a report on a Pride month celebration in Mexico City, about this year’s New York City Pride Parade.
FRANCISCA LACHAPEL, HOST, UNIVISION: Hey, also in New York.
ALAN TACHER, HOST, UNIVISION: Yes.
FRANCISCA LACHAPEL: Also in New York, the whole community was celebrating together with the LGBT community, and well everyone was supporting. I also loved seeing the hashtag #loveislove on social media, love is love, any way you look at it. So how good is it to have these kinds of parades that promote tolerance and equality, and that we all have to be proud of who we are.
Attendance at the annual NYC Pride bash is no doubt massive – by some estimates in the two million range – but it is both wrong and irresponsible to present it as most of the people of New York City, much less “everyone” or the whole Hispanic community.
Even granting what is likely an inflated attendance estimate, NYC Pride was attended by a distinct, but disproportionately influential, minority. It is also well to remember that, in the national context, the LGBT community is estimated by Gallup to comprise only 4% of the population of the United States.
Both Univision and its chief rival, Telemundo, were prominent sponsors of NYC Pride. Comments such as those of Lachapel and Tacher are symptomatic of how the network’s morning and evening programming is consistently aligned with the interests and agenda of only the liberal segment of the population, and is oblivious – and often antagonistic - to the still large, socially conservative component of the population it purports to serve.
Below is the complete transcript of the above-referenced segment, as aired during the May 25, 2018 edition of Despierta América on Univision.
FRANCISCA LACHAPEL, HOST, UNIVISION: Hey, also in New York.
ALAN TACHER, HOST, UNIVISION: Yes.
FRANCISCA LACHAPEL: Also in New York, the whole community was celebrating together with the LGBT community, and well everyone was supporting. I also loved seeing the hashtag #loveislove on social media, love is love, any way you look at it. So how good is it to have these kinds of parades that promote tolerance and equality, and that we all have to be proud of who we are.
ALAN TACHER: That's right, Adis, I imagine how it must have been there in the la Reforma, my friend. What else do we have?
ADDIS TUÑÓN, CORRESPONDENT, UNIVISION: No, and also, no and also the tolerance that you were talking about. The people who love the game, who were celebrating, also put on the flag. We didn’t even know which colors were which, the wonderful ones of Mexico as well.
ALAN TACHER: But it does not matter, we are all one.
