Univision took on the role of anti-DeSantis propagandist in a shady report about the implementation of Florida’s HB 1467, which provides directives for books and materials allowed in the state's public school libraries. The law was signed by Governor Ron DeSantis in March of last year.
The 30-second news flash was aired on February 1st, and delivered by anchor Borja Voces of the network’s midday news edition. In addition to leaving out which materials would be banned, Voces relied on a staged video depicting empty school library bookshelves that made it seem like the children in Florida will now be deprived of any and all educational materials in their school libraries.
"I can report that several Florida schools got to work in order to comply with a new law passed by that state’s governor, Ron DeSantis,” Voces said on-camera, promptly cutting to a video filmed at the library of the Mandarin Middle School in Jacksonville.
The law requires school library employees to detect books deemed inappropriate for children in a classroom. In fact, teachers may be sanctioned for having books that are inappropriate. What do you think?
The disinformation propaganda against DeSantis began with his enactment of other laws that empower parents in the education of their children: First was the Parental Rights in Education Act, which was maliciously rebranded as ´Don´t Say Gay´. Then came the controversy over CRT and “Queer Studies” in the AP African-American studies course. Now, Univision underscores that “teachers may be sanctioned for having books that are inappropriate. What do you think?”.
We think, Mr. Voces, that the viewers of Univision should be informed that the materials banned from media centers/libraries include:
We also think that by showing empty bookshelves, Univision may have inadvertently implied that all of the books at the referenced library fell into one (or all) of the above mentioned categories; thus, they had to be removed in order for the school “to comply with a new law passed by that state’s governor, Ron DeSantis”. Why else would they be empty??
Instead of disseminating teacher union propaganda, what if Univision told Latino audiences, particularly the parents of school age children in Florida, that the referenced legislation, “aims to preserve the rights of parents to make decisions about what materials their children are exposed to in school?”. And that “In Florida, our parents have every right to be involved in their child’s education,” in the words of Governor DeSantis.
The viewers of Univision deserve balanced and unbiased information. Follow this link to call out Kellogg´s, a regular advertiser at the nation's Spanish-speaking media.