Time
By Michael Sherer
November 20, 2014
The most influential Latino news anchor is taking a stand and wants you to notice
As
it turned out, Obama had arranged to start speaking at the very moment
Univision, America’s largest Spanish-language television network,
planned to begin broadcasting the 2015 Latin Grammy
Awards, one of the network’s biggest shows of the year, with a 2014
viewership of nearly 10 million.
Indeed,
Univision promptly announced that it would delay the start of the live
event to take Obama’s remarks, in translation, ensuring the President a
massive platform in the most crucial
political demographic, even as many of the English-language networks
said they would skip the address. The chances are high that the leading
lights of Latin pop music will follow up his words tonight with on-stage
celebrations of the President’s actions.
The
White House, not to mention its Republican rivals, long ago learned the
power of a network most American cannot even understand. And at the
center of that network is one of the most aggressive
and influential newsmen in America, Jorge Ramos, who I profile in this
week’s TIME magazine.
It
is an exciting TIME for Ramos, who in recent years has remade himself
as a bilingual journalist agitator, fighting for his audience to get
immigration reforms in the United States and political
reformation in his native Mexico. “It’ll be a triumph for the Latino
community,” Ramos wrote to me in an email yesterday, after the
President’s announcement was set. “It’ll demonstrate our newfound power.
This is not something that we got; this is something
that we fought for.”
For
Ramos, the importance of the move was difficult to overstate. “This
will be the most important immigration measure in 50 years—since the
1965 change in immigration law. In terms of numbers,
it’ll have a wider impact than the 1986 amnesty,” he continued.
“Although, it’ll be temporary, Republicans will have a very hard time
rejecting it and not being seen as anti-immigrant or anti-Latino. Also,
this will have a tremendous impact on the 2016 presidential
campaign.”
If
you don’t know who Ramos is, you probably will soon. He is the host to
Noticiero Univision, a nightly Spanish language newscast; Al Punto, a
Spanish-language Sunday political show and America
with Jorge Ramos, an English language news magazine on Fusion. (His
Univision news shows regularly beat their English language rivals among
young viewers.) He writes a bilingual newspaper column that published
internationally, and appears regularly as a pundit
on English-language cable networks, like CNN and MSNBC. Polls among the
U.S. Latino community rank him as the most trusted and influential
Hispanic in America, beating all other political leaders, and his
Q-score among Latino audiences places him between soccer
magus Lionel Messi and the pop starlet Shakira.
You
can read more about him, his activism, and his troublemaking approach
to journalism in the magazine. But I have posted below some lightly
edited excerpts from one of our interviews. We
spoke about the scandals in Mexico, his past interviews with Mexico’s
current President and some allegations that have been hurled against
Grupo Televisa, the Mexican media giant that is one of the owners of
Univision. We also spoke about the difficult balance
he strikes between journalist and advocate.
TIME:
So if you say that if [Obama grants legal status to] two million, the
White House is being too timid. How do you know? What are you basing
that on?
JORGE
RAMOS: It’s very simple. We have at least eleven million people who are
in this country as undocumented, without papers. So if you’re only
going to help two million, it is not enough.
It is clearly timid and wouldn’t be bold enough. Of course you will
change the lives of two million people. But it is not what is expected
from the community. And we’ve got to say that. The problem has to do
with the expectations. When Obama came to power
in 2008, right before the election, he promised us that he was going to
introduce immigration reform during his first year in office.
What is the outer edge of how far you would be willing to go as a journalist who wants to advocate for his audience?
The
limit is, I am a registered Independent. I would never say to whom I
vote. I would never pressure anyone to vote for one party or another.
That would be way too much.
What
is your role as one of the few journalists from Latin America who can
actually get [interviews with Latin American political leaders]
interviews on television, and then ask whatever question
you want? Do you feel an accountability role for those countries? Are
you serving those populations too?
Well
what I can tell you for instance is I feel with much more freedom to
ask those questions. Because I can come back to the States and enjoy
complete freedom of speech. If I had stayed in
Mexico, instead of coming to the United States, I am absolutely
convinced that I would have been a censored journalist. And a very sad
one. Because I wouldn’t have been able to ask the same questions that I
ask from this side of the border. There’s no question
about it. There’s no question that I have more freedom than many
journalists in Mexico who are criticizing the Mexican president.
Do you think [Mexican President Enrique] Peña Nieto lied to you when he said I’m not a millionaire?
I
don’t know. But my role is to question him. And my role is to make sure
that he’s not lying. And if he’s lying, that he’s accountable for that.
And this is new.
In
one of your columns recently you suggested that it wouldn’t be a bad
idea if the Mexican legislature to try to take him from office?
But no one is doing that, no one is doing that.
You were suggesting it, no?
I’m
reporting that there are thousands of Mexican who want Peña Nieto to
quit, no? To resign. So here’s what I think our role as
journalists—Congress is not investigating Peña Nieto. The Attorney
General is not investigating Peña Nieto. Most of the media in Mexico
are not questioning Peña Nieto. So somebody has to do it. And I think it
is our role to do that. Precisely to do that. And I have the
opportunity to do it from the United States to question
what Peña Nieto is doing, what President Maduro is doing in Venezuela.
With much more freedom than Mexican and Venezuelan journalists. I mean
there is no freedom of speech in Venezuela. So how can you question
President Maduro from Venezuela?
Do you think Televisa played a nontransparent role in the election of Peña Nieto?
What
I can say is that Peña Nieto spent much more, much, much more than all
the other candidates. And that millions of Mexicans question if he won
fairly, no? And that’s – and that might be
even an understatement. And that’s why Peña Nieto I think right now is
having serious problems. Not only with his complete failure when it
comes to security issues. And a questionable house owned by his wife.
But also in terms of being legitimate in front
of millions of Mexicans who don’t think that he won fairly.
My
favorite line from [your book] Lo Que Vi is where you say that the joy
of being a journalist is that you can preserve the restlessness and
rebelliousness of youth.
That’s
beautiful. I’m 56 and I still have the privilege of acting as a young
reporter. Which is beautiful. Because when you’re young, young, you’re
questioning everything. As a journalist
you are forced to question everyone all the time. And therefore stay
young, no? And that’s the beautiful part. And then, what I found
fascinating about our profession is that you can actually talk to those
who are never used to being questioned. And look,
it’s only—we consider it only philosophically as journalists that it is
truly our role to question those who are in power. And I think our most
important social responsibility is to make sure that they don’t abuse
their power. And I think this comes from being
brought up in a very close, censored society like the Mexican society.
But then, if I apply the same model here to the United States, then I
very early understood that my role was to represent a minority. To
represent Latinos, and especially to represent immigrants.
For many different reasons. First because I’m an immigrant. I mean I
can’t avoid that.
In
one of the Fusion pieces you did on the border, you were standing next
to the fence and you said it reminds you of the Berlin Wall. Why?
Because
it is incredible, that nowadays you have open borders in Europe. And
that’s a taboo issue here in the United States. I mean you can go – a
few months ago I went from Spain to France,
I paid 6 Euros at the border. There was no police, no agent, no one
stopping me. And here in the United States, we can’t even discuss the
possibility of something like that. I’m not arguing for open borders.
But it’s a taboo issue.
Do
you feel that your responsibility at Univision or here is to challenge
your audience as well? The representing them and talking about DREAMERS
and talking about what Boehner’s obstructing.
Do you try and do stories on the other side of immigration? Like the
unions being upset that wages on jobs are going down in meat
packingplants because there’s undocumented workers working in them?
Of
course, yeah but I think we have to concentrate on the really big
issues. And the really big issues is that you have a community that is
underrepresented politically. You have a community
with eleven million people who are living in the shadows and in fear.
And we only have three senators. We are 17% of the population. And we
only have three senators.
And two of them don’t say what most of the population [says on immigration].
Exactly.
So I think that explains why our role on Univision and on Fusion is
different than what you would expect from NBC, ABC, or CBS, CNN and Fox
News. Because a population who has no voice,
or very little, or very few voices, needs to express themselves. I mean
who is going to speak for all of the immigrants in this country? I mean
who is going to tell John Boehner that he is blocking immigration
reform? I mean, who is going to say that? It was
– in an ideal world, one Latino senator and many members of congress of
Hispanic origin would have gone to Boehner and told him in his face,
you’re blocking immigration reform. That didn’t happen. So it is our
role to do that.
Democrats
[have] said—and you know these people and they’ve said it to you—that
you’ve been unfair to the President because he’s the greatest President
ever for the Latino community if you
look at his push for minimum wage which disproportionally helps
[Latinos], Obamacare covering Latinos disproportionately, economic
progress, there are some measures that Latinos are improving, coming out
of poverty quicker than others. What do you say to that
criticism?
Well
that he just didn’t keep his promise in the most important, symbolic
issue for Latinos. When you have a community in which one out of two
members is a foreigner, and you don’t deal with
that issue as you promised, of course you’re going to be criticized.
But I think I’ve been – as a journalist more than being objective, I
think my role is to try to be fair. I try to be fair with both democrats
and Republicans. I criticize fiercely President
Obama for not keeping his word. For delaying action on immigration. And
I’ve criticized fiercely Republicans for blocking immigration reform.
They will lose the White House if they continue doing that. So I think,
in that sense, I’ve been fair, or if you want,
unfair to both.
For more information, go to: www.beverlyhillsimmigrationlaw.com
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