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For the first time ever, NPR will be covering the State of the Union address in both English and Spanish, along with the Republican Party’s response. KQED will be broadcasting this coverage, as a separate transmission from the one in English, on its HD2 radio station. You can also listen to NPR’s Spanish broadcast here. The speech begins Tuesday night at 6 p.m. PT.
After the speech, the broadcast will feature commentary hosted by NPR Morning Edition’s A Martínez, joined by NPR correspondents Franco Ordóñez, Claudia Grisales and Eyder Peralta and KUT’s Sergio Martínez-Beltrán. In an announcement to member stations, NPR said that offering bilingual coverage could expand the information stations provide to audiences.
Christian Arana, vice president of policy at the Latino Community Foundation, which funds Latino-led organizations and encourages greater political participation among Latinos in California, points out that over 67 million people in the U.S. speak a language other than English, a number that has tripled in the past 40 years.
“When you look at what the State of the Union is, it’s a celebration of democracy. But a democracy also means that people should be informed,” he told KQED. “That’s why it’s so critical that whatever is said that night, people can understand it and feel it in a language that they speak.”
The U.S. Census estimates that over 41 million people speak Spanish, and roughly 11 million of those live in California.
“We just underwent a global pandemic where access to information meant whether or not you actually got a COVID-19 test or whether or not you got a vaccine,” he said. “We saw firsthand how important language accessibility was in the last couple years.”