When this California Spanish-language TV station closed, a news desert opened for Latino viewers

This story was co-published with Voices of Monterey Bay.

Univision and Telemundo were constantly on in Suzanne García’s childhood home in Santa Ana. For immigrant families like hers, Spanish-language news is not simply news translated from English; it’s news tailored to their experience, identity, interests and background, explained García, a professor at Cal State Monterey Bay. 

It doesn’t take an expert in bilingual and bicultural education like García to understand what it means for communities when these channels suddenly go dark.

KMUV 23, a Telemundo affiliate, was the Central California Coast’s only local, Spanish-language television news station. It abruptly shuttered in late September, eliminating one of the main sources of reliable information for viewers dependent on local reporting in their language.

“It’s a huge loss to not have Telemundo,” García said.

While much of the news coverage of the station’s closure focused on the English-language broadcast side, KION, and on the accelerating atrophy of local journalism, there are even fewer remaining options for the region’s Spanish-speakers — especially immigrants, who are vital to the economy but terrorized by raids on their communities.

The Salinas Valley is known as the salad bowl of the world. Field workers and farms produce more than 371 million pounds of fruits and vegetables. More than half the leaf and head lettuce consumed in the United States is grown here. 

Almost two-thirds of Monterey County’s residents are Latino, according to the U.S. Census. More than a quarter of residents are foreign born and the largest of that group — 102,772 people — are from Latin America. 

That’s too many people without a single source of local news in their main language. 

Telemundo and KION are owned by Missouri-based News-Press & Gazette Co., which owns TV stations in 10 regions across the country, including Palm Springs and El Centro. 

On Sept. 23, KION posted on its website that effective 5 p.m. that day, it would begin airing news from KPIX, a station in the San Francisco Bay Area more than 100 miles away. 

KION’s closure came after the region’s two largest newspapers, the Salinas Californian — which no longer publishes daily — and the still-daily Monterey Herald had already withered to paywalled news sites.

The collapse of the Californian ended El Sol, a local bi-weekly, Spanish-language newspaper. And it has been 20 years since the San Jose Mercury News closed Nuevo Mundo, its Spanish-language weekly. 

Local Spanish-language radio remains, but Sandy Santos, the last producer at KMUV, said there is a distinction between those stations and what KMUV offered. Local Spanish-language radio is not properly set up for reporting and fact-finding, she said.

“We have some radio, but it’s more music and entertainment, not news,” Santos said.

Salinas, like elsewhere, has seen the vacuum of local news lead to a rise of social media content creators. 

Alejandra Ruiz, a health outreach worker with Mujeres en Acción, said that, in the absence of trusted outlets and reporting, migrant communities are turning to social media for updates on immigration raids and local news. Garcia said even she is starting to do that.

Santos acknowledged that reliance on social media for news is the new reality, but “likes” and “shares” are not the same as reported fact.

“It leads to chaos, misinformation and half-truth,” Santos said.

In the meantime, locals will get Spanish-language television news from the Bay Area. Santos said Telemundo’s other Costa Central station north of Los Angeles still exists, but news from Santa Barbara, Santa Maria and Oxnard won’t help these locals.

“I just don’t know how useful that is for folks in Monterey County, Salinas or Santa Cruz,” she said.

Civic engagement and local accountability suffer

The closure of the region’s last locally produced Spanish-language news broadcast will have repercussions beyond media metrics and the commercial value of a captive audience. It could impact voting and civic engagement, García said, especially among mixed-status families, where some members are undocumented and others are citizens.

García remembers TV news coverage in 1994 of Proposition 187, the voter-approved initiative that sought to deny undocumented immigrants public education, social services and non-emergency medical aid. Los Angeles’ Telemundo and Univision stations reported on the ballot initiative from the perspective and understanding of immigrant communities, she recalled. 

Education policy shapes schools, she added, and Monterey County has high rates of English-learners and bilingual students. Residents, including immigrant and Spanish-only homes, need to be informed about school policy, including this summer’s freeze in federal funding for migrant education and looming federal budget cuts. 

Residents need to be aware of their right and duty to advocate for programs that serve themselves and the broader community. 

In general, the loss of local reporting ultimately correlates with a decline in civic engagement — think voting — and an increase in corruption, studies show. It doesn’t matter what language is spoken. We may soon know what that looks like for the Spanish-speaking population in Monterey County.

For the record: This story has been updated to correct the name and frequency of The Monterey Herald