What is the deal with accents? Some news organizations and
networks noticeably have begun to accent the names of
individuals, places and things that carry a Spanish spelling.
Some don’t. ESPN is almost meticulous about it. PBS not so much.
The New York Times does it; other newspapers – of all news
organizations that should – do not. How Spanish names and words
began to lose their accents has itself been lost in time. Most
of the loss, of course, has to do with the disrespect for the
language fueled by anti-Spanish sentiment leading up to and
after the U.S.-Mexican and U.S.-Spanish wars. As important was
the market of the time. Now, amid the new demography of the
country, seeing a Spanish name in print or on a television
screen with an accent stands out as much as seeing the same name
the very next day without one.