Miami Herald apologizes for running anti-Semitic, racist ads

Anti-Semitic ads. Image by twitter

By Josefin Dolsten September 17, 2020

(JTA) — The Miami Herald has apologized for running anti-Semitic and racist ads in its Spanish-language publication el Nuevo Herald for months.

A column in a paid insert titled “Libre” in the Friday edition said Jews support “thieves and arsonists” and compared the Black Lives Matter movement to the Nazis.

“What kind of people are these Jews?” Roberto Luque Escalona wrote in the column. “They’re always talking about the Holocaust, but have they already forgotten Kristallnacht, when Nazi thugs rampaged through Jewish shops all over Germany? So do the BLM and antifa, only the Nazis didn’t steal; they only destroyed.”

Today’s @elnuevoherald, the @MiamiHerald’s Spanish-language paper, ran a 40-page insert full of fanatical right-wing extremist propaganda including a racist and anti-Semitic article comparing BLM to the Nazis #BecauseMiami h/t @ajhoward121 pic.twitter.com/CbvtSEn4h0

— Billy Corben (@BillyCorben) September 11, 2020

On Monday, the Herald apologized in a statement and said that upon review, the paper found that the insert had included “multiple instances of anti-Semitic and racist commentary since January.”

“The fact that no one in leadership, beginning with us, had previously read this advertising insert until this issue was surfaced by a reader is distressing,” the statement said. “It is one of a series of internal failures that we are investigating in order to prevent this from ever recurring.”

The statement did not address criticism over why the Herald had allowed the insert’s publisher, Demetrio Perez Jr., to advertise in its pages. Perez pleaded guilty and was sentenced in 2001 to house arrest and probation for defrauding elderly tenants in low-income housing that he owned.

The publication of the insert was referenced in a Monday article in Politico saying that Latinos in Florida were being flooded with anti-Semitic messages, including those affiliated with the QAnon conspiracy theory.

The post Miami Herald apologizes for running anti-Semitic and racist ads for months in Spanish-language publication appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.

Josefin Dolsten is a New York-based writer who has reported for the Forward, Jewish Telegraphic Agency, The Times of Israel and other Jewish publications. She currently works as an account director at Fenton Communications, supporting organizations that work to advance racial justice, LGBTQ+ equality, reproductive rights and more. Dolsten earned her B.A. in government from Cornell University and her M.A. in comparative religion and Jewish studies from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

The coming year promises to be filled with more complex and historic developments. We are entering an era where independent, fact-based Jewish journalism will be more important than ever. We need to be ready for whatever 2025 will bring, and with your help, we can be.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO