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NBC News Flubs Name of Latina Miss USA Contestant

Patrick Howley Political Reporter
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Latina-American Miss USA contestant Thatiana Diaz is no stranger to adversity. The 22-year-old’s Dominican immigrant parents struggle daily as a Wall Street executive and a business owner, respectively. But now, as Sunday night’s pageant occurs against the backdrop of Donald Trump’s immigration-remarks controversy, Diaz must endure yet another slight: NBC News got her name wrong.

In its Sunday article “These Latinas Are Participating in Miss USA,” the mainstream NBC network identified Miss New York four separate times as “Tathiana Diaz,” in both the body of the text and also in captions.

But her proudly Latina first name is actually “Thatiana.”

NBC also dropped Miss USA from its programming due to Trump’s immigration stance, forcing the contest to air instead on something called Reelz Channel, and severely diminishing the audience that could have watched Diaz REPRESENT for all Latina women.

It’s disgusting, but not altogether surprising, that the mainstream media would confuse Diaz’s name. After all, only three of the contestants in the Trump-owned competition are Latinas, while many others are – yep, you guessed it – white. But Diaz isn’t about to let NBC News’ thoughtless bigotry stand in her way.

“There is a big representation of Latinos in this nation,” Diaz told NBC News in the article in which they got her name wrong. “We need to focus on the contestants and not Trump and not politics…I think we need to stand on that stage and show how hard working we are and what we are made of.”

Even though there’s no talent portion, this brave young woman just sang “Oye Como Va” to our hearts.

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