20 MONTEREY COUNTY WEEKLY JANUARY 29-FEBRUARY 4, 2026 www.montereycountynow.com The 6pm and 11pm newscasts are aired in five counties: Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo, Monterey, Santa Cruz and San Benito. In 2017, Univision Costa Central, which is operated by Entravision (the largest Univision affiliate), had three multimedia journalists covering the entire region. In 2018, that number went down to two, focusing on the tri-county area. During the pandemic, it was cut to one. (Editor’s note: This reporter worked at Univision Costa Central from June 2019-April 2020.) Today, Adriana Frederick is the only reporter in the field covering the tri-county area for Univision Costa Central. In 2023, Univision added a local producer, Bernardo Romero. The newscast is prerecorded in San Diego and then aired at 6pm and 11pm, a practice Escareño says can be detrimental. “The news changes by the minute. If there’s a developing story [and] you’re pre-recording something, you’re not going to have the most updated information,” she says. “I think Adriana does a great job with the limited resources that she has,” Escareño adds. Carlos Tamez, Univision’s news director, says Entravision has adapted to audience preferences and it has expanded its digital presence, launching 27 local news websites. Tamez also recognizes its shortcomings: “No digital strategy can replace the value of field reporting.” Representatives from Telemundo did not respond to a request for comment. In Monterey County, there is no dedicated local radio newscast in Spanish. Saldivar says it’s expensive to produce a news show, noting the local station has only four workers, one of them part-time, and they rely on volunteers to create content that airs on KHDC (90.9 FM). Instead, they focus on public affairs shows, inviting local nonprofit, government and grassroots leaders to talk about current issues including health, immigration, civic engagement and more. Locally, this program is called Comunidad Alerta, or Community Alert, focused on issues with local, state or national interest. It airs at 10-11am Tuesdays through Thursdays, and Saldivar is one of the hosts. The program is interactive and people can call to ask questions or make comments on Facebook since it’s also live on the social media platform. Radio Bilingue is a nonprofit Latino public radio network based in Fresno that operates at more than 30 stations across the country. The station offers news content through various programming, including Edición Semanaria, a national newsmagazine, and Línea Abierta, a national public affairs show similar to Comunidad Alerta, and five minutes of daily news segments. Samuel Orozco, Radio Bilingüe’s news director based in Fresno, says bilingual stations were hard hit when the Corporation for Public Broadcasting disappeared after funding cuts from Congress last year. Radio Bilingüe lost 10 percent of its budget, as well as grants that would have been used to upgrade obsolete equipment. Orozco adds news in Spanish has been historically poor and worsened over the years. “The impact has been brutal,” he says in Spanish. He has worked in radio for more than 40 years and in that time, news content and programming in Spanish has stagnated: “It’s comparable to what it was about 40 years ago.” Both Saldivar and Orozco say radio stations prefer to wager on entertainment content and profit margins rather than news. Orozco has hoped for decades that Spanish content would expand to include more news, educational and cultural content. “Unfortunately, these offerings rarely include news of interest to the communities…or serious journalism. They only offer entertainment,” Orozco says. Social media has become an increasingly prominent place for people to communicate and keep themselves informed. Escareño and Orozco say in many instances, the information they receive is not always accurate or reliable. Social media expands the reach for news and independent journalism but it has also increased the number of influencers or content creators who don’t have a journalism background and do not follow a journalistic code of ethics. Some Spanish-language journalists have gone independent, such as Antonio Sánchez, a former news anchor from Univision Portland who launched his own Spanish-language YouTube newscast, Noticias Noroeste, to keep the Latino community informed. Escareño says this trend has not taken hold locally, but she sees a place for those journalists who are finding an audience this way: “They are using social media as the way of informing the community about what’s going on in the world.” “THE IMPACT HAS BEEN BRUTAL.” new spring arrivals carmel plaza winter clearance soft coats sport coats outerwear carmel-by-the-sea FRESH. LOCAL. TASTY. Fisherman’s Wharf FRESHEST SEAFOOD with PANORAMIC VIEWS Open Daily at 11:30am • At the end of Fisherman’s Wharf #1 www.rockfishmonterey.com • 831.324.4375 622 LIGHTHOUSE AVE. MONTEREY. @HULASTIKI • (831) 655-HULA (4852) the original
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