Pet Peeve: Insertion of Pretentious Fake Accents

This habit of newscasters has bothered me for years:

Here’s one of my admittedly trivial crotchets: the increasingly common habit of English-speaking newscasters to pronounce Spanish and Latino proper nouns with a (usually pretend) Spanish or Latino accent.

You know what I mean. If reporter Jones of CNN or ABC is reporting on some goings-on in, say, Mexico City, he’ll not say "Meks-e-ko" (as native English speakers pronounce that country’s name); instead, he’ll say "Mea-he-ko" (the way native Spanish speakers pronounce it). If reporter Smith of NBC or CBS is on air discussing, say, recent elections in Madrid, she’ll invariably pronounce the politicians’ names as if she were speaking in Spanish to a Spanish-speaking audience.

Hat tip: Radley Balko.