Hugo Balta, president of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists and a producer at ESPN, has written an op-ed criticizing Bloomberg’s Businessweek for an anti-Latino cover dealing with the housing market.
In a piece published on FoxLatinoNews.com, Balta writes, “It’s insensitive and ignorant. It stereotypes. Discriminates. Demonizes. Scapegoats. And it’s misleading. Faces of color are cast as caricatures and the greedy benefactors of the housing crisis — when the truth is that Latinos were disproportionately the victims.”
Balta also said, ” Propaganda like the Bloomberg Businessweek cover leads to feelings of resentment that can act to incite violence and hatred against Latinos, which is what has been happening when it comes to issues of immigration in this country. All this for a story in which race and ethnicity are not factors and are not even mentioned.
“Bloomberg Businessweek’s cover also raises questions: Why didn’t anyone see that this cover was a problem? Where were the safeguards to make sure this kind of thing did not happen? Josh Tyrangiel, Bloomberg Businessweek’s editor, has apologized, saying, ‘Our intention was not to incite or offend. If we had to do it over again we’d do it differently.'”