When Media Monetizes Fear: A Question for Leadership

By Tony Hernandez – Founder of the Immigrant Archive Project

I came to this country as a child, part of a refugee family seeking safety, stability, and opportunity. Like millions of others, Spanish-language media became an indispensable part of our daily life—not just as entertainment, but as orientation. It helped us make sense of our new world, how things worked, and reinforced the fact that we belonged.

That’s why, as a media executive and storyteller, I’ve been thinking deeply about the decision by major Spanish-language broadcasters to accept advertising dollars from U.S. government agencies currently engaged in aggressive immigration enforcement.

This isn’t an ideological critique. It’s a leadership question.

For CEOs, CMOs, and sales executives, advertising is often framed as neutral inventory. Revenue is revenue. Ads are not editorial.

But when the advertiser is the federal government, and the message is designed to deter, intimidate, or pressure a population that includes mixed-status families and long-settled communities, neutrality becomes a convenient fiction.

These messages don’t land as “public information.” They land as fear.

Spanish-language broadcasters are not just market vehicles. They are trusted institutions. Their value proposition to advertisers has always been proximity to community trust built over decades. That trust is not an abstract asset—it is the product.

So the question for leadership is not “Is this legal?”

It’s “What does this do to the relationship with the audience that makes our business viable?”
I understand the pressure. Traditional media is under strain. Government agencies come with scale, consistency, and cash. But monetizing fear inside one’s own audience ecosystem carries long-term costs that don’t show up on quarterly spreadsheets.

Brand trust erodes quietly—then suddenly.

This isn’t a call for censorship. It’s a call for executive judgment: clearer standards, greater transparency, and a willingness to say no when messaging undermines the very communities a platform claims to serve.

Every organization ultimately chooses what it will and will not monetize. That choice is a leadership signal—to employees, advertisers, and audiences alike.

So here’s the question for those of us in leadership:

When revenue and community trust come into conflict, which one do we treat as truly indispensable?