TelevisaUnivision's CEO on the network's approach to covering President Trump's 2nd term

NPR's A Martinez speaks with Daniel Alegre, the CEO of TelevisaUnivision, about his op-ed on the changing attitudes of Latino voters.

Transcript

A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:

Days after the election, TelevisaUnivision CEO Daniel Alegre published an op-ed titled "The Hispanic Vote This Election Shocked Many, But Not Us." Alegre wrote that in weeks leading up to the election, he spoke with various campaign leaders to share Univision's recommendation that Hispanics care about the issues, and they want to feel and be engaged and informed in their own language. He joins us now to discuss this and the network's approach to covering President Trump's second term. So, Daniel, why did you take it upon yourself to meet with campaign leaders prior to the election?

DANIEL ALEGRE: For us at TelevisaUnivision, our real mission and priority is to give the U.S. Hispanics a voice. So the reason why we engaged with the various campaigns was to give them a feedback of what we were hearing from the electorate.

MARTÍNEZ: Why did you feel like you needed to do this, though? I mean, was there something that you felt was missing in terms of communication between campaigns and your organization?

ALEGRE: Well, what we saw at the beginning of the year - and we released some of this data - is that in the past, the Hispanic vote had been seen as a party vote, and mainly a Democratic party vote. And that has been changing over the last few years and really accelerated during this campaign, where Hispanic vote is no longer a truly party-oriented vote, but it's more an issues vote. And we relayed that information to the various campaigns.

MARTÍNEZ: And how did these campaigns receive your information?

ALEGRE: Yeah, it was a little bit mixed. But the Hispanic vote really was influenced by messages around the economy and messages around the border and security. You saw it reflected in the election results.

MARTÍNEZ: Is this at all crossing a line, though, where you're essentially giving campaigns information to help them win an election?

ALEGRE: No. Really, our mission is really to report the information as we have it. So we have a really good pulse about what matters to Hispanics throughout the entire country. And the same way that we reported in the news, we provided that information equally to both sides and said, look, these are the issues that matter to Hispanics.

MARTÍNEZ: Now, you wrote, quote, "some campaigns ignored our recommendations, assuming they could reach Hispanic audiences in mainstream digital and social platforms. Winning campaigns did not." How do you know that you were ignored?

ALEGRE: We have access to information as to where political spend is going, and then we also got the feedback from the campaigns themselves. The campaigns that basically said we can reach the Hispanics through English media - and we saw it in particular in the swing states - those campaigns were the ones that didn't necessarily do as well as the campaigns that actually advertised in Spanish on Spanish media.

MARTÍNEZ: Now, a year before the election, TelevisaUnivision had a sit-down with President Trump that drew criticism for allowing President Trump to go largely without questioning his facts and analysis. The town hall you hosted with him in October also drew some similar questions. So now that he's president-elect, how will you approach covering Donald Trump?

ALEGRE: We see ourselves, TelevisaUnivision, as being the voice of Hispanics. That means that if there is something that is important to our community, we will report and we will ask some of the tough questions. Invariably, no matter how hard the questions are on each side of the aisle, you're going to get criticized.

MARTÍNEZ: Now, arguably the face of TelevisaUnivision's news, Jorge Ramos, due to retire from the company by the end of the year. He's also been critical of your network's approach to covering Mr. Trump, and he's had a few standoffs with the president himself. Are you concerned at all about President Trump's contempt for the press as experienced by one of your own journalists?

ALEGRE: Look, we're very, very proud of our newsroom. We have a great relationship with Jorge Ramos. Now we have Ilia Calderon, who's going to be the anchor. She will carry the torch and continue to do what we do best.

MARTÍNEZ: That's Daniel Alegre, CEO of TelevisaUnivision. Thank you very much.

ALEGRE: Thank you very much, A. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.