Annotations for Subject-headings: Television Broadcasting

A new survey says there are now more Latino journalists working in the United States media, but few in management positions. Olga Rodriguez has this report.

According to a survey conducted by the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, the number of Latinos employed in major newspapers rose by 27% in the last two years, but less than 3% of them are in management positions. Cesar Rocha, who conducted the study, says there are several reasons why the number of Latinos in management remains so low.

There's little commitment among many publishers and editors to the goal of diversifying their management team. There are very few Latino managers, as we said, to act as mentors, and there is the growing dissatisfaction among everyone.

The study also says that the number of Latinos in broadcast journalism is increasing, but at a slower pace than in print media. Another concern is the small number of Latinos in the nation's journalism schools. For "Latino USA," I'm Olga Rodriguez.

Basic issues such as equality and fair media coverage are concerns that carry from one Latino Journalist Conference to the next. Both fairness and equity were main topics at last year's National Association of Hispanic Journalists gathering in Albuquerque and this year again in Washington D.C. Here's a collection of the voices of Latino journalists from around the country.

Our children, what they're getting at home, they put on the TV, they open the newspaper, the images they're seeing, and that is hurting our community. Usually, those images are very negative, the stereotypes. And they don't see themselves in a positive light when they put on the television or when they read the newspaper or when they listen to the radio. And I cannot tell you how basic that is to the development of our community.

Not all Latinos are in gangs. Teenagers, not all of them are drug dealers, hustlers, you know, on the street corners. But that's the only time they make the news. I mean, they never seem to -- When somebody's doing a positive thing, they never put that on news. They always put something negative, whether it's a burglary or robbery or killing.

We're not this monolith, and we're not a bunch of crazy Latins who blow up buildings and play loud music and these sorts of things.

The stereotype needs to be broken. And in order for us to change that, we need to go back and we need to just get, encourage more students, more younger people to get involved in the media because it's the only way we're going to make a difference.

We have to make inroads and get into the mainstream. And for that, we have to acquire a sense of our own worth. We have to start knocking the doors of Anglo America.

We need to get more Latinos into management positions that -- So that we actually decide what stories to cover rather than being told what stories to cover.

The mass media and American society determines what the people will think about and what the people will talk about. And that is an awesome power. It is a power that has been held closely, consciously or unconsciously. It has been held closely. And the battle to open it up, the battle to insist that all aspects of our society and all sectors of our society will have equal access to that awesome power is a battle that we must wage.

Once a year, Latino journalists from across the country come together to network, improve their skills, and examine their impact on the U.S. media. This year, over 800 members of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists met for four days in the nation's capital. And joining us today are Diane Alverio, the President of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists and a TV reporter in Hartford, Connecticut; Juan Gonzalez, a columnist for the "New York Daily News"; and George Ramos, a columnist reporter from the "Los Angeles Times." Welcome to "Latino USA." Some of you were involved 11 years ago when this organization was actually formed. Eleven years later, what is different now for Latino journalists operating and functioning in the United States? Juan?

Well, I think that one thing that has happened is you've had a spurt and a tremendous growth in the number of young people that have entered journalism as a profession. It seems to me that every conference, more and more young people appear to be eager to get into the profession. So I think that that's been a tremendous step. A lot of the work that NAHJ has done has been in nurturing and developing and helping to train those young college students and high school students, getting them scholarships and promoting their writing work. So that's been a tremendous step forward.

Unfortunately, on the other end, we don't seem to be retaining as many of the veteran journalists who apparently are coming up against walls and frustrations that they end up leaving the profession, so that on balance, the numbers of Latino journalists have not really grown qualitatively. There's this minute growth that is occurring -- part of a percentage point or a half a percentage point a year, but there's no real qualitative growth in the numbers of Latinos in the newsrooms of the United States.

So, when these Latino journalists get into wherever their newsrooms or if they be at TV stations, et cetera, how much debate is there for these Latino journalists around the questions of, "I'm a journalist first, and then I'm Latino," or, "I'm Latino first, and that influences my role as a journalist"?

I know that at the "LA Times," it's something that I have raised for about the last, oh, I'd say about at least five or six years. Am I a reporter who happens to be a Latino, or am I a Latino who happens to be a reporter? I don't think there's a right or wrong answer, but how you answer the question says a lot about how you look at news and whether or not you take news seriously. I happen to be a Latino who happens to be a reporter because they don't pay me to be a Latino. I'm that coming in. So when I look at a story --

You were born that way.

I was born that way. I'm sorry, but that's a good way to put it. I have a unique perspective, and when I look at something, the editors know that that's how I'm going to look at it, that I -- Hopefully, I'm professional, but my eyes happen to be brown. They're not blue or hazel or something else.

Is there an encouragement of that unique perspective, Juan, from a Latino journalist? Or is it more like, "Well, don't necessarily look at it through those eyes. Maybe you need to see it through a more mainstream eye"?

I think there's a tremendous ambivalence on the part of the managers of the newspaper and television and radio stations on this question. They would like to have Latino reporters in their organizations, supposedly, to be able to give them access to communities and information that they otherwise would not have. However, they would rather that those Latino reporters look at these communities through the same eyes that the non-Latino reporters look at them.

And a part of the great contradiction, I think, of American journalism is understanding that even when you are doing news reporting and trying to be fair and report reality, the fact is that reality is always looked at subjectively by each individual and that there is no such thing as objectivity. There are many individuals attempting to recreate objective reality and that, but you're always doing that subjectively because you're always doing it through how you were raised, what your parents taught you, the school that you went to, the things that you learned. That's the only eyes with which you have to look at the world. And that's true for all reporters.

But somehow, when it comes to Latinos working, let's say on a Latino's story, the editor may think that you will not look at that in an objective fashion, as if a white reporter covering that Latino story would look at it in an objective fashion.

And it's not just about objectivity either. It's about your perspective that they both talked about. Just this past week, a national -- I won't mention the name of the show -- a national -- one of the network magazine shows aired a piece on 936, the tax issue with Puerto Rico in Puerto Rico, and I, as a viewer and possibly as a journalist, I'm sure, and especially as a Puertorriqueña, was watching it, and I thought, "But they're not giving the entire story."

I happen to know the background of 936 just because I am Puerto Rican and I know the history, and the way the story was presented, it just explained the tax law and why the financial benefits the company, but it never delved into why this was instituted in the first place, what the U.S. role has been in Puerto Rico that necessitated a tax reform, a tax act like this. And I felt that the viewer was gypped. The viewer that was non-Hispanic, non-Puerto Rican like I, did not get the correct information in which to form his or her opinion so that what I'm saying is that Latino journalists bring that with them, information that other non-Hispanic journalists may not have or don't bother to go after.

Now, these are very, very interesting issues, not only for us as journalists who come together once a year to talk about these things but also for our communities. But the NAHJ as an organization really is probably not that well known across the United States. Should the organization, the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, become more of an activist organization where it is recognized across the country as an organization that is there supporting the Latino community and that has the Latino community's interest at hand, or should it be an organization that really focuses on this professional community, Latino journalists?

We as Latino journalists have been discussing that in the last couple of years. And it's kind of an identity question. It's part of the growing pains of the organization. And I think -- I was attending a panel recently, and someone said it quite well. By the very fact that we have banded together as Latino journalists, we are a civil rights organization, whether all our members want to accept it or not, because our goals are primarily to increase the numbers of Latinos in the industry, to improve coverage of the Hispanic community. If those aren't civil rights issues, I don't know what are.

Thank you, Diane Alverio, the President of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists; Juan Gonzalez of the "New York Daily News"; and George Ramos of the "Los Angeles Times."

Since the 1960s, the fight for fair media coverage has been an integral part of the struggle for Latino civil rights. Chicano and Puerto Rican activists fought to have their movements covered accurately and fairly by the press. Now, almost three decades later, civil rights activists and Latino reporters at the journalists' conference agreed that their goal of an unbiased media is the same. Barrie Lynn Tapia reports.

Politicians, activists, and journalists came together in Washington, D.C., to examine how well the media has covered Latino civil-rights issues. It was made clear there exists a unique link between social activism and the coverage of minorities. Many veteran Latino journalists, such as ABC's correspondent John Quiñones, say the activism of the '60s and '70s paved the way for them in the media.

I wouldn't be working in broadcasting today if it had not been for a group, an offshoot of la Raza Unida party in San Antonio 25 years ago. They picketed outside a top 40 station in San Antonio and demanded that they hire a force on the air that was more representative of the population of San Antonio.

According to the United States Census Bureau, Latinos make up almost 10% of the total population. But Latinos in newsrooms around the country account for less than 5% of the work staff. Dolores Huerta, Vice President of United Farm Workers, says this leads to stereotypical portrayals in the media.

I think all of us probably have felt that what we get portrayed in the media as Latinos as Mexican Americans, is that we're all illegal aliens, right? And if you're not an illegal alien, you're a drug runner.

Hispanics, Latinos, Chicanos, Central Americanos were pictured and represented in a negative rather than positive way.

Cruz Reynoso, a former California State Supreme Court judge, has recently been named to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission.

What does the media have to do with civil rights? And I must say that in my view, it has everything to do with civil rights, because the media is an important element in our country in setting the national agenda for issues to be discussed, issues to be debated, what makes America, who represents America, who are we.

Reynoso says lack of coverage of Latino issues makes this population almost invisible to the rest of the country. One example of this was the failure of the media to accurately report how the Los Angeles disturbances of last year affected Latinos. He also cited studies documenting not only a lack of positive Latino images but also how the media has ignored this segment of the population.

More often than not, particularly not in the news reporting but in the general programming, Latinos were reported not at all.

NAHJ President, Diane Alverio, says the poor portrayal of Latinos in the media is due in part to the small number of Latinos in the industry. Her organization is poised to try and change that.

We move forward with a determination and desire of so many Latinos before us, and that is to achieve equality. For us, that is to achieve equality in the newsrooms of this country. We ask for nothing more, for nothing less.

For "Latino USA," I am Barrie Lynn Tapia with Arthur Dungan in Washington.

That's the deep right. It sends Gwynn to the wall. He leaps and can't get it. It's backed up by Bobby Kelly --

Baseball, it's the all-American pastime, and for Latinos as well. The CBS television broadcast of the All-Star game featured an all-Spanish television language commercial, which ran twice.

Setenta mediocampistas en baseball profesional son de la Republica Dominicana.

Called "La Tierra de los Mediocampistas," the Land of the Center Fielders, the ad for Nike featured images of Dominican kids playing baseball in makeshift diamonds in the Dominican Republic.

More than 70 Big League shortstops, including Tony Fernández and Manny Lee, have come from the Dominican Republic.

Ken Griffey Jr. en tercera base…

The broadcasting of baseball and other professional sports in Spanish is becoming more common in this country in places like California, Texas, and New York. But now even teams in less traditional Latino cities are discovering the profit of pitching their games to Hispanic listeners.

Ingrid Lobet reports that this season, for the first time, baseball fans in the state of Washington can listen to the Seattle Mariners games in Spanish.

[Sports Broadcast Recording] Larry se espera, le da cuarda, lanza, viene, contacto! Se va hacia el centro y Ken…se va escapar, se va escapar, se les escapa!

Perched in the cramped broadcast booth, Publio Castro handles the play by play.

[Sports Broadcast Recording] Muestra señal, la manda, viene, strike! [Spanish baseball report].

Castro has worked to establish a style that's his own. He always knew he wanted to work in broadcasting, even when he was a child doing farm work in California. Through their hard work, his parents made it possible for him to go to college.

I studied TV production, and I just wanted to know how they made movies, how they make cartoons, how they made commercials, how the cartoons moved, and those sound effects, and stuff like that.

Castro and his brother started a talk radio show in a small town in Oregon. And when a producer came looking for talent to host Portland Trailblazer basketball, he didn't have to look very far.

Finley presenta lanza bien, toquecito! Ken Griffey! ¡Sacrificio cuenta! ¡Es más, salvo! Blowers a pesar de que está cogiendo, le gana a Finley.

When Cliff Zahner heard Castro's show, he knew he had a place for him. Zahner makes a business of persuading teams to air games in Spanish. He then identifies stations that broadcast in Spanish and whose formats could benefit from the games. Then he provides them the games for free.

And then they get half of the airtime that they can sell to make their own money and we have half of the time that we can sell to pay for our expenses and the announcers. So it's added programming for them, and they'll generally do it if they feel it's a sport that's interesting to their audience. And baseball is particularly interesting because of the Hispanics that play the game.

The Mariners' team alone has Omar Vizquel, Edgar Martínez, and coach Lou Piniella. By giving Spanish-language interviews, these players are now able to reach another audience. And Randy Adamack, Vice President of Communications for the Seattle Mariners, says advertisers are slowly taking interest.

Even without it being a profit center, which it is not right now, it's obviously got value to us anyway, in speaking to a large group of important people.

If advertisers stick with the games and if the present trend continues, there will be few professional teams in the Northwest that aren't broadcasting in Spanish. It's tentative, but as football training camp begins, there are plans to make fall 1993 the first season for Seattle Seahawks games in Spanish.

[Sports Broadcast Recording] Se acaba esta entrada, donde el score dice, ahora los Angelitos de California con cuatro, Marineros con dos. Regresamos, esta es la cadena de los Marineros de Seattle.

For "Latino USA," I'm Ingrid Lobet in Seattle.

This is Latino USA, the radio journal of news and culture. I'm Maria Hinojosa. Today on Latino USA, a historic focus on issues affecting Latinos from Washington, to San Juan, to Los Angeles.

Yes, we are different national origins. We're different partisan roots, but the truth is we have much more in common than the things that separate us.

We'll also go to Miami, home of MTV Latino, and the growing Latino entertainment industry.

In the future you'll see a lot of crossover Latin artists getting more into the Anglo market and vice versa, and also the new breed of bilingual artists.

That and more coming up on Latino USA, but first, las noticias.

Diez. Nueve. Ocho. Siete. Seis. Cinco, cinco cinco. Cuatro. Tres. Dos. Uno.

The MTV Cable Network has just launched MTV Latino, a new 24 hours Spanish language music network distributed throughout Latin America and to some US cities.

[unintelligible 0:18:49] caballeros. Rock and roll.

Somos Aerosmith.

For years, the entertainment industry serving the Latino market was based either in Latin America or in Los Angeles, where non-Latinos controlled much of the business. But now the bulk of the Latino entertainment industry, like the new MTV Latino network, is based in Miami where Latinos are establishing their own turf. Melissa Mancini reports.

Miami ranked 16th in US media markets, but it's the number one location for the Latin entertainment industry, headquartering, Latin television, music and print trades. The reasons are simple. Nearly 60% of Miami's population is Hispanic and the city's location is convenient to Central and South America. In addition, Miami has more reliable air transportation and telephone service than its southern neighbors. With the whole of the Hispanic media located here, entertainment attorney David Bercuson says, "Miami is the premier stop for Latin recording artists and other entertainment figures promoting their current projects."

In addition to television, it's a center hub for a lot of Spanish media, print media. So with all those things working for it and the record companies, there's a lot of symbiotic relationship. The record companies are here, they send them right over to whatever magazine it is for interviews, and then they send them right over, it could be even be the same day, to one of the major networks for television exposure where they can do 3, 4, 5 shows at one network, and the next day do a number of shows at the other network.

As the US city with the Latin American flair, Miami offers another big payoff. The amount of money pumped into the national economy via Telemundo and Univision, the two major Hispanic television networks. A recent industry study shows that TV advertisements spurred Hispanics to spend $200 billion annually on consumer goods and services, and it's estimated that number will increase 40% by the year 2000. In addition to the television and print media, Miami is inundated with Hispanic radio stations, and it's here that other Latin stations throughout the US look to when they're charting music trends. David Bercuson says, "Miami's Betty Pino is one of the most important radio programmers for Spanish pop music."

And when she programs things on her lists, those lists are carefully watched throughout the country by other Spanish radio programmers. And even if their format is not totally pop, and they only play four or five or six songs that are pop, they'll look at these lists that are put out by this one station, this one program in particular, as persuasive and controlling.

Sony Discos. No, ¿quisiera- [unintelligible 0:21:48]

Sony Discos Is the Latin music heavyweight of record labels. Established about 10 years ago in Miami, Sony Discos was the first Latin label to sign artists such as Julio Iglesias and Gloria Estefan, allowing it to corner the market. Sony Discos vice President Angel Carrasco.

The record business for us, in the last five years, has been very profitable. We have grown a lot and we feel that Latin music now is getting recognition from other audiences. Europe, tropical music is very big, and then artists like Julio Iglesias and Gloria Estefan have helped us improve our image as far as [inaudible 0:22:30] is concerned. And that has opened up a lot different markets and different audiences that are buying our records.

And because Miami is still a fledgling in the entertainment industry, the city has not yet developed the hard edges associated with New York or Los Angeles. Nicaraguan born Salsa star Luis Enrique has been with Sony Discos for five years. Enrique literally walked in off the street and was handed a recording contract. He says before that he spent years trying unsuccessfully to meet with other music executives.

I tried to do it in LA and it was hard. It was really hard to open doors, and I remember I used to go and sit down on the sidewalk at A&M recording studios and try to talk to someone.

Latin music is a $120 million a year business in the US in Puerto Rico. Although it's estimated Hispanics makeup only 10% of the total market Sony Discos' vice president Angel Carrasco says the Latin market is strong and growing.

The future is wonderful. I think in the future you'll see a lot of crossover Latin artists getting more into the Anglo market and vice versa. Also the new breed of bilingual artists, not only has Gloria made it big, but also [inaudible 00:23:53], who was also a local Cuban born guy, also produced by Emilio Estefan, has made it big. And I think the most important pop music for the Latin market is going to come out of the United States in the future.

Sony Discos is one of about a dozen Latin music labels located in Miami. At least three additional record labels are said to be considering relocating here. In addition, VH1 and Nickelodeon, both owned by MTV networks, are said to be following MTV Latinos tracks into Latin America and South Florida. For Latino USA, I'm Melissa Mancini in Miami.

Pop rhythms and grungy glamour were the rule at a recent opening night party for MTV Latino. The party in Miami South Beach went late into the night as the global rock music giant MTV celebrated its move into 11 Latin American countries and the US latino market. Nina Ty Schultz was at the celebration and filed this report.

MTV Latino Americano. Wow.

MTV, la mejor música.

With hundreds of exotically dressed people crammed into one of South Beach's hottest nightclubs, MTV Latino is launched. There's as much Spanish as English in the air and as many models as musicians. It's all part of MTV's image of youth and ease and scruffy good looks. Take Daisy Fuentes, she's a model turned MTV host who will anchor the new show in Miami as the master of ceremonies here tonight, she's got the kind of bubbly, bilingual enthusiasm that MTV Latino wants to project.

Now we're really going to be in your face. I am talking Central America, South America, the Caribbean, and even in the USA in Español.

MTV will literally be in the face of 2 million viewers with another million predicted by the year's end. MTV's, CEO Tom Preston explained why it's all possible now.

We see that cable television industry exploding. As the media is deregulated, huge demand for alternative types of television services like an MTV.

That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.

He expects the business to be lucrative, not just for MTV, but for Latin American rock and pop stars as well. Gonzalo Morales from Mexico is one of the video jockeys for the show.

They're going to for sure promote their selves all over Latin America. I mean, 10 years ago it was impossible to think that they would be signing to into an international record company and selling the number of records they sell. Nowadays, rock and roll in Mexico, it's really huge now.

The rock groups here tonight come from all over. Maldita Vencidad from Mexico, Los Prisoneros from Chile, Ole Ole from Spain. But oddly enough, the first artist to perform is the not so Latin Phil Collins. That's no mistake. Over three quarters of the music on MTV Latino will in fact be from so-called "Anglo musicians". "That's what Latin teens want to hear," say MTV execs who feel they know the market after running a year long pilot show. Though they say programming may change depending on audience demand. For Latino USA, this is Nina Ty Schultz in Miami.

For now, in this country, MTV Latino can be seen in Miami, Tucson, Boston, Fresno, and Sacramento, California.

Home Box Office has announced plans to launch HBO en Español, a Spanish language version of its regular schedule of movies. HBO en Español will be available in the top 10 Latino markets beginning in October, and television network Telemundo plans to launch their Spanish-language newscast in conjunction with Reuters television. I'm Maria Martin with news from Latino USA.