By Santiago Pérez and José de Córdoba
MEXICO CITY -- A week after Donald Trump's election victory, two Mexican media executives flew to the Mar-a-Lago resort in Florida so the president-elect could personally thank them for TelevisaUnivision's Spanish-language coverage after Hispanic support shifted toward Republicans.
In Mexico, Alfonso de Angoitia and Bernardo Gómez are known for their political acumen and the longstanding influence of Grupo Televisa, a company that gained fame for taking soap operas, called telenovelas, to a global audience. Now, they are important interlocutors between Trump and Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum.
They might assist with contentious cross-border issues such as security, migration and trade but also play a role in shaping the views of Hispanic Americans who are increasingly willing to cross party lines. Trump is proposing mass deportations of illegal immigrants and 25% tariffs on Mexican imports.
De Angoitia and Gómez have been friendly with Trump's son-in-law Jared Kushner for years before overhauling TelevisaUnivision, a network long seen as an advocate for migrants. Trump had contentious exchanges with Univision's top anchor during his first campaign.
That began to change after the 2021 merger of Univision and Grupo Televisa, where de Angoitia and Gómez have long steered the company. They took on top roles -- de Angoitia as executive chairman of the newly merged company, TelevisaUnivision, and Gómez as a board member.
Concerned the network's editorial line had cost it clout and access to newsmakers, the company's board pushed for coverage to move toward the center, said people familiar with the discussions.
At the same time, Trump's campaign was trying to appeal to American Hispanics, long part of the Democratic Party coalition. His tack was to treat them as a key conservative segment of the population mostly preoccupied with the cost of living, housing and jobs.
By November 2023, Trump agreed to an interview. The exchange gave Trump access to the living rooms of Hispanic voters, with some 1.3 million people tuned into "Donald Trump: La Entrevista," according to Nielsen data. Recorded in Mar-a-Lago, it was the most-watched interview among Hispanic audiences in recent television history, the network said.
"It was like an icebreaker," said Daniel Coronell, who heads TelevisaUnivision's news division. "It opened a communication channel with the Republicans and set off alarms in the Democratic Party."
When Americans voted on Nov. 5, Trump racked up 42% of the Latino vote, compared with 35% in 2020, according to a survey of voters by the Associated Press and data from Cornell University's Roper Center for Public Opinion Research.
The shifts go beyond any one interview, but Trump wanted to personally thank de Angoitia and Gómez at Mar-a-Lago.
"We have a longstanding friendship with President Trump," de Angoitia and Gómez said in a written response to questions by The Wall Street Journal. "He invited us and expressed his appreciation for our neutral and balanced news coverage during the past elections."
Trump's transition team didn't respond to requests for comment.
The executives established links with Trump and his family early in his first term, according to people familiar with the situation. They first met with Kushner at his Washington, D.C., home in early 2018. Andrés Manuel López Obrador won Mexico's presidential election that summer by a landslide, and Kushner wanted to meet the charismatic nationalist leader.
At López Obrador's suggestion, Gómez hosted a dinner at his home in Mexico City in March 2019. It was an intimate gathering where Gómez and de Angoitia acted as interpreters for Kushner and López Obrador. At a news conference afterward, López Obrador said he had discussed with Kushner the role U.S. investment could play to discourage illegal migration.
Kushner had been a back channel during negotiations for the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, which replaced the North American Free Trade Agreement. He helped the two sides break a deadlock that led to the signing of the trade deal in 2018, said former Economy Minister Ildefonso Guajardo. Grateful for Kushner's efforts, departing President Enrique Peña Nieto awarded him the Order of the Aztec Eagle, Mexico's highest decoration for foreigners.
The ties between Kushner and the Mexican executives continued after Trump left office.
For decades, Univision's news shows reported extensively on the plight of migrants -- the network's natural public -- as they made new lives in the U.S. That focus drew Univision close to the Democrats.
A quarter of Hispanics prefer to get their news from Spanish-language media, according to a study by the Pew Research Center, a think tank. Overwhelmingly, U.S.-born Hispanics prefer to get their news from English-language sources.
But Hispanics have close multigenerational ties, with families living together composed of grandparents who speak only Spanish, parents who are bilingual, and grandchildren who speak only English. Although most of TelevisaUnivision's viewers might be first generation, the network still has a lot of clout, said Fernand Amandi, a Democratic consultant on Hispanic voters based in Miami.
"A lot of their viewers who have been here for 10 years or less have kids, extended families and friends," he said. "What's on Univision is part of the conversation."
Coronell, TelevisaUnivision's news director, said having hardly any access to Republican leaders meant that the broadcaster also had little access to Democrats, who took the network and Hispanic votes for granted.
The Trump interview, conducted by news anchor Enrique Acevedo, made news across the U.S. Trump discussed the possibility of the Justice Department prosecuting political opponents and defended family separation as a deterrent against illegal immigration. For network executives, the interview demonstrated TelevisaUnivision's new reach into the U.S. mainstream.
Inside TelevisaUnivision's Miami studio, the newsroom was shocked. The interview helped convert Trump -- who had called Mexican migrants rapists and criminals -- into a respectable candidate that Hispanics might consider supporting, said Amandi, the consultant.
Former staffers dispute that the network ever lacked access to top Democrats and Republicans. Longtime Univision news anchor Jorge Ramos interviewed former President Barack Obama five times, as well as Republican presidential candidates.
Some of the criticism came from Ramos, who is known for his tough questioning. During a news conference in Trump's first campaign, Trump had Ramos removed, telling the anchor to "go back to Univision." Ramos, who declined to comment, recently said he would leave the network at the end of the year.
Acevedo dismissed criticism from colleagues that he was soft on Trump. "You don't make news by confronting Trump," he said.
In April, TelevisaUnivision landed an interview with President Biden. In October, it hosted "Latinos Ask," two separate town-hall events with Trump and Vice President Kamala Harris. While the Harris event got 25 million views on social media, Trump obtained more than 85 million, according to the network. Spots from the interview went viral on late-night shows because of the incredulous reactions of Hispanics in the audience to Trump's responses.
For TelevisaUnivision's news executives, the numbers signaled a shift in voter intention toward Trump, even as his threats of mass migrant deportations are likely to affect TelevisaUnivision's audience.
"The true test of Univision as an independent editorial and news-reporting organization will be if it fully covers the deportations, " Amandi said.
Coronell responded: "We will always give full attention to issues such as deportation and to claiming the rights of Latinos, including those who don't have documents."
Like other broadcasters, TelevisaUnivision faces strong headwinds due to declining viewers and competition from streaming services. It has laid off staff and canceled premier news shows.
Grupo Televisa, the largest shareholder of TelevisaUnivision, is also under scrutiny. Chairman Emilio Azcárraga took administrative leave in October pending the resolution of a Justice Department investigation related to FIFA, the body that regulates world soccer.
U.S. prosecutors have said FIFA officials received millions of dollars in bribes for media rights to soccer tournaments. In 2023, Televisa reached a $95 million settlement to resolve a U.S. investor lawsuit accusing the company of bribing FIFA officials to win rights to World Cup tournaments. The company has said it is cooperating with the probe.
--Isabella Simonetti contributed to this article.
Write to Santiago Pérez at santiago.perez@wsj.com and José de Córdoba at jose.decordoba@wsj.com
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
December 09, 2024 08:57 ET (13:57 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2024 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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