Cross posted at Future Majority.
I've heaped praise on MTV over the past month for their innovation in reaching out to younger voters online, so it was disappointing to me to read this article in Ad Age announcing announcing MTV's Tr3s, a bilingual channel for Latinos.
NEW YORK MTV Tr3s, the bilingual channel for young Latinos, featured a first-ever platform Saturday for its viewers to voice their opinions on the immigration debate, an issue that is a personal one for many Hispanic youths who are undocumented or who have family members who are not legal U.S. residents.
For the fledgling channel, the move is part of a wider effort through other issue-themed programming on television and online to enhance the political clout of Latinos heading into the 2008 election. The immigration debate is expected to emerge as a key voter issue among Hispanics.
It isn't the channel or the project that I object to. 18% of Millennials are Hispanic, they are one of the fastest growing portions of the electorate, and young Latinos deserve a forum in broadcast media. With ethnic media becoming a force, it makes business sense for MTV as well. As Ad Age reports, advertising in the Latino youth market was a $2.9 billion industry last year.
My objection is with MTV's partner and sponsor: Salie Mae and the U.S. Army, respectively. MTV is selling this programming as a form of community service to young Latinos:
"MTV has a mantra of doing a lot of community outreach with the MTV Think campaign, and we're always promoting civic engagement and activism," Ballas-Traynor said. "For us [at MTV Tr3s], the perspective was, 'This is done a lot by Univision, Telemundo and others, but ours is a different audience with a different perspective.'"
Using the Think campaign Web site, MTV Tr3s will promote its issued-themed programming, giving viewers a chance to continue the dialogue on immigration and other issues such as education.
But, to paraphrase Kanye, Sallie Mae does not care about young people. They are a company that is involved in some of the student loan scandals that have graced the pages of our media in the last 6 months. They are a for profit company that exploits young people and the government, and worked hard to keep our student lending system highly inefficient and dysfunctional (though to be sure, more profitable for them).
If MTV had looked, they could easily have found a partner more suited to serving the interests of young Latinos. The Center for Community Change or the Ella Baker Center immediately jumps to mind. Working with MTV would be a huge profile boost for those organizations, both of which have roots in the communities MTV would be trying to reach. Instead, MTV is providing cover for an company whose interests are fundamentally at odds with those of the constituency they are purporting to help.
MTV's major advertiser, The U.S. Army, has a similar credibility problem. As has been reported in numerous places, the U.S. Army frequently uses Hip Hop culture to recruit African American teenagers, presenting a glorified image of life in the Army, and even a leg up on life. Yet few soldiers ever receive all the benefits they are promised by recruiters. I find it difficult to believe that the Army's intentions and tactics would be any less objectionable among Latinos.
It seems like MTV is doing the right thing in launching its bilingual channel, but if it is really concerned about giving Latinos a voice in the public debate and an equal place at the table in our society, it might want to look into brokering partnerships with organizations that actually have the best interests of latinos at heart.