100% POLITICAL

Univision Deal Arouses Ire in Washington, D.C. (Anne C. Mulkern and John Aloysius Farrell, June 3, 2003, HispanicBusiness.com)

A political maelstrom has erupted over the proposed merger of the nation's two largest Spanish-language broadcasters, encumbering the billion-dollar deal with questions of race, censorship and media bias.

Lawmakers, celebrity lawyers and lobbyists, and public relations experts are drawing up sides in the battle between Los Angeles-based Univision and the Spanish Broadcasting System.

"I don't think I've ever seen anything like this in a media merger," said John Dunbar, a telecommunications expert for the Center for Public Integrity. The issues at hand are not commercial, he said. "It is 100 percent political."

Univision wants to swallow up the Hispanic Broadcasting Corp., the nation's largest Spanish-language radio company, with 53 stations in 15 U.S. markets. The merged company would control 70 percent of Spanish-language advertising dollars in the U.S.

Radio rival Spanish Broadcasting System says the merger would go beyond a business deal. The company and its supporters, including a roster of high-ranking Democratic officials such as Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton, Edward Kennedy and Tom Daschle, claim the merger is a cover for a more insidious takeover: Domination of the Spanish-speaking media by conservative, non-Hispanic owners, who would then operate the equivalent of Fox News for the Spanish-speaking world.

"Democrats are looking at this and thinking, 'You are going to turn all our Hispanic Democrats into Republicans,'" Dunbar said.

We're strangely untroubled by this prospect... Posted by Orrin Judd at June 5, 2003 8:36 AM