El pueblo unido: Partnering with the community to create bilingual COVID-19 news
Idaho residents work together to help combat coronavirus misinformation
Last week, I sat on a back porch in Heyburn, Idaho, listening intently to the overlapping Spanish conversation between four Latinas discussing the coronavirus. I was wearing a mask, which is familiar now. I had just worn one for five hours in a row touring a small, overwhelmed hospital the next town over.
The virus has been spreading like wildfire through this rural area, hitting the Latino community early, hard, and ongoing.
Also familiar in these conversations: a common complaint.
“There’s misinformation, and not enough information,” one woman said, referring to the lack of official information about coronavirus, and its deadly effects, in Spanish. “People need to know the consequences.”
More than 120,000 Idaho residents speak Spanish, according to US Census Bureau estimates. About 40 percent of those Spanish speakers — roughly 48,000 people — reported they speak English “less than well.” Large swaths of Idaho’s Latinos, including many of those Spanish speakers, fill essential jobs on farms and dairies, in food processing plants and in construction and therefore are still heading to work in areas with widespread community transmission. Among these monolingual Spanish-speakers, literacy rates are also low, meaning many Idaho Spanish-speakers prefer to get their news from online videos or local radio stations across the state.
The Idaho Statesman published the first Spanish update about the coronavirus pandemic in March, shortly after Idaho reported the state’s first coronavirus case and Idaho Gov. Brad Little issued an emergency declaration. The Statesman continued to publish periodic Spanish updates as the pandemic progressed, and it became evident that not much reliable, local information was making it to the people who needed it most. For us, public service was more important than competition, which is why we’ve made these Spanish updates and other Spanish materials free to reuse by any Idaho media outlet and local public agency — even some of our competitors.
In the last eight months, the efforts of state and local agencies to reach out to the state’s Latino population have been haphazard and slow at best, especially when it comes to providing important updates in Spanish. This has occurred as Latinos across the state are suffering from the pandemic at far higher rates than their white counterparts.
Thanks to a generous JSK Community Impact Fellowship from the John S. Knight Journalism Fellowships at Stanford University, the Idaho Statesman will be able to keep providing some of this crucial, bilingual coverage of COVID-19 and Idaho Latinos. But it’s important to note that any work being done is because of a community in which its members have already stepped up to help each other.
Over the last few months I’ve spent reporting on how COVID-19 is affecting Idaho’s Latino communities, I’ve been thinking a lot about the phrase “El pueblo unido jamás será vencido.” The people united will never be defeated. It’s a fairly radical phrase, used often in protests and linking back to the Chilean resistance in the ’70s and ’80s. But it’s been ringing in my head for a while now, as I look at how many in Idaho’s Latino community are working to help each other through the pandemic, or who have generously offered their time, editing and translation assistance or their radio and social media platforms to spread the word.
Here’s a perfect example. A few months ago, I asked Boise State University professor Fatima Cornwall for help on a problem I couldn’t fix myself. Every other week, the governor updates the state on the coronavirus pandemic, issuing new orders or answering reporter questions. Although there is an American Sign Language interpretation of each of these events, it’s never been provided or translated in Spanish, as in some other states.
But thanks to a dedicated class of Boise State students, that’s changed. The students in Professor Cornwall’s “Spanish for Healthcare” class are partnering with the Idaho Statesman to add Spanish interpretation to some of the most important clips from each press conference. These students, many of whom are native Spanish-speakers, have given up many evenings and weekends to make sure their community can hear their state leaders deliver information important to their families’ lives in their first language.
And they’re not the only ones sacrificing time and resources to make sure the community is informed. There are radio hosts and personalities Ben Reed (“El Chupacabras”) in Jerome and Yanira Corvera (“La Vaquerita”) in Nampa, who use their respective platforms every week to connect people to the accurate coronavirus news and experts who can answer their questions in Spanish. There are community organizers who have worked long hours to collect masks and distribute them to farmworkers across the state. The Idaho Immigrant Resource Alliance — created during the pandemic — has raised $210,000 since June to give financial hardship grants to the undocumented immigrants and farmworkers who are working throughout the pandemic without a safety net.
Going forward, the Idaho Statesman will hopefully keep building on those partnerships and relationships that are already sustaining the community. In partnership with Twin Falls-based reporter Stephanie Garibay and Idaho News 6, we’re producing weekly Spanish video updates, summarizing the most important coronavirus news of the week and distributing the news clips on Facebook and through organizations already serving these communities.
Thanks to funding from Stanford, we’re translating more and more of the Statesman’s reporting on coronavirus in our state — whether it’s about how the pandemic is disproportionately impacting Latinos, a hospital in the Magic Valley diverting patients as COVID strains staff, the loss of a beloved community leader, or how farmworker families can seek assistance and monetary relief.
And now, you can find all of that Spanish news on one page of the Statesman’s website: www.idahostatesman.com/noticias-en-espanol.
We’re hoping to partner more and more with those that are already lifelines for Idaho’s Latino communities, including Spanish radio stations and anyone else who is working hard to deliver important news that we can support and amplify. With so few resources in a time when we need them most, I believe it’s important for journalists to work together, and hand-in-hand with the community. If you have ideas on how to do that, please contact me at nfoy@idahostatesman.com.
The people united will never be defeated. It’s a good reminder for Idaho as we battle the coronavirus and a breath of hope for our communities as we head into what’s likely to be a difficult winter.
We have a lot of work left to do.
