Oscar Lopez Rivera’s Legacy of Terror Mostly Whitewashed by Univision
19th January 2017
Univision’s report on President Barack Obama’s commutation of the prison sentence of convicted terrorist Oscar Rivera López is an astounding case study in fake news. The story, which went unreported on the evening ABC, CBS and NBC newscasts and was accorded a quick blurb at Telemundo, took top billing on Tuesday’s Univision newscast.
One of the fascinating parts of this story is the anchor lead-in. Most of the time, the anchor sows bias into a straight-up report from one of their field correspondents. However, this was not the case. María Elena Salinas was factual, accurate, and neutral in her lead-in. But then Lourdes Del Río took over, and with that came the fake news portion of the report.