U.S. News Outlets Slight Mexico at Their Peril

It’s obvious from watching U.S. Supreme Court Justice nominee Sonia Sotomayor’s confirmation hearings that politicians have become increasingly wary of upsetting Hispanic voters.

In the last election, Hispanic voters shifted away from Republicans and voted for Barak Obama. The was result was Democratic victories in three battleground states: Colorado, New Mexico, and Nevada.

Hispanic voters’ influence on future U.S. elections is only likely to increase. According to a recent report by the U.S. Census Bureau there are:

• about 47 million Hispanics in the U.S., making them the largest ethnic minority group in the country;
• projected to be about 133 million Hispanics in the U.S. by July 1, 2050; and
• more Hispanics in the U.S. than any other country in the world, except for Mexico.

About 65 percent of Hispanics living in the U.S. are of Mexican background.

U.S. media outlets should take note of this last statistic. It was only a few months ago that Mexico was written off as a “failed state” after violence resulted from its crackdown on drug cartels.

When the U.S. State Department began issuing travel alerts in October, many news outlets never bothered to mention that the alerts specified that the violence was limited to certain areas of Mexico. Instead, the news headlines blared “Violence in Mexico.” Some reports raised questions about whether it was safe to travel to areas such as Cancun where tourists were unaffected by the violence.

But it’s only a matter of time before the growing Mexican-American population grows tired of this coverage. Just as they can vote a politician out of office, they can simply turn off an uninformed news show or stop reading a newspaper or magazine that continues to rely on easy cliches about our southern neighbor.

Photo by Bill in Ash Vegas (Via Creative Commons)