Portrayals of Latinos In and By the Media p.

By: Debra Gersh

DURING HEARINGS IN Los Angeles on the events surrounding last year's rioting, part of the attention focused on the media.
"Several people asked me why we were interested in the media," said Cruz Reynoso, a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, which held the hearings.
"The media have everything to do with civil rights," he added, explaining that the media "set the national agenda for issues to be debated" and they define "who we are."
Speaking at a meeting devoted to "The New, Latinos, and Civil Rights" during the National Association of Hispanic Journalists annual conference in Washington, Reynoso told of various portrayals of Latinos in and by the news media, as recounted by various witnesses.
What this means for the Civil Rights Commission, he said, is that it is vitally important for civil rights advocates and the media to work together.
While the Latino community in Los Angeles depends on the Spanish-language media, the mainstream media are still a source of great power, he said.
There is a need not just for Latino reporters but also writers and producers and others behind the scenes who make the decisions about what gets covered, he added.
Growing up, Reynoso said, there always were Spanish-language media in his home, but outside the home, in the mainstream press, "it was as if we were invisible."
The Spanish-language media, he added is not enough to reach the consciousness of the community as a whole.
"In this country, we are in a great experiment," Reynoso stated, "to see how people who are different in race, language, ethnicity and other factors can live together.
Although it will be difficult, Reynoso thinks it is an experiment that can be won, with the help of the media.
"You are a vital part in making sure all of us recognize all Americans...[in] binding America together," Reynoso told the NAHJ attendees.
New York Daily News columnist Juan Gonzalez said he has had many battles with editors during his 16 years as a journalist over his activism in the Puerto Rican community.
Even in the early years of the Puerto Rican civil rights movement in New York, which was "barely covered," Gonzalez said, its leaders understood the "tremendous power and influence of the mass media to determine what people will think about.
"That power has been held closely," he added, noting that "the battle to open it up is one we must wage.
"Throughout your careers, there are editors and publishers and owners who will tell you differently, [that you] must be objective, above the fray,'" Gonzalez said. "I am challenging that assumption."
Gonzalez urged Latino journalists to continually "be concerned with what happens in our community" and to "insist that coverage be more equitable and balanced."
As one whose organization was the focus of media attention, Dolores Huerta, vice president of the United Farm Workers, said, "mass-based organizations do not get the kind of coverage they should," especially when they are composed to minorities.
Huerta told the NAHJ that the only time the UFW could get coverage was when there was a strike, and even then, a peaceful action was portrayed as violent.
The media, she explained, "never really reported the type of organization going on or the benefits we were trying to achieve."
Further, portrayals of the workers often pictured them as illegal aliens and never told the "true story of the farm workers who go out and toiled in the fields to feed the nations and they can't feed their own family."
Huerta told of stories that vilified the workers but never came down on the growers for refusing to negotiate or providing unreasonable working conditions.
She said it is "very painful when you see you own Latino reporters telling that story like the mainstream [media]. When we start mimicking the major press against our own people, it is a great disservice."
UFW founder Cesar Chavez understood the power of the media and started a newspaper and two radio stations to reach the union's constituency, Huerta explained.
The next step is television, she said, where there ought to be more dark-skinned people.
Racism is "very blatant. A lot of us feel it," she said. "We've got to start calling it what it is: racism."
"Civil rights are rights all people share. They are rights we all have and they are all the same rights," commented Guilermo Martinez, senior vice president/news, Univision, during a panel discussion following the speaker's remarks.
Referring to a newspaper article describing the tension between blacks and Hispanics over civil rights - since blacks have worked so hard for civil rights, can the Latinos just walk in and enjoy those protections as well? - Martinez pointed out that if you say you have civil rights and others do not, you are doing the same thing as those who would deny them to you.
"Journalists have an obligation that advocates who want to divide the community further do not get away with it because our people will suffer," he said.
Elvira Valenzuela Crocker, president of the Mexican American Women's National Association, noted that Latino journalists do a disservice to the Hispanic community if they do not know its history or its issues.
"The black civil rights movement did not occur because black journalists were not with them," she noted. "If ours is to happen, you have to be with us."
Alan Acosta, assistant metro editor of the Los Angeles Times, pointed out that not only do Latino journalists lack a sense of their history but also of their power.
"If you have power, you have to use it," he said, adding that when it comes to civil rights, each generation has to re-earn the gains made before it.
It was not until the riots in Washington, two years ago that issues affecting the Latino community gained exposure, explained Pedro Aviles, executive director of the Washington-based Latino Civil Rights Task Force.
Coverage of Latino civil rights was infrequent, unfocused and often negatively biased, he said, adding that is also is not as "sexy" a story as the rioting.
Nevertheless, Aviles said, "Latino journalists have to play a more active and assertive role in discrimination coverage."
Some Latino journalists have been very supportive, he continued, but "unless people take bold actions, we don't have any attention from the media on [these] issues."
Aviles stressed that he was not advocating riots, but he did note that is how the Hispanic community in Washington got some attention.
"I hope in your role as journalists you will take a more active and assertive role," Aviles said. "Yess, we've been successful in getting our issues out, but that was because of the riot.. If you want to avoid that, journalists need to play a more assertive role."
On Capitol Hill, perception is 98% of reality, and the media are important in shaping that perspective, explained Mario Moreno, director of the Washington office of the Mexican American Legal Defence and Educational Fund.
"Unfortunately, stereotypes prevail and on the Hill, civil rights is seen as a black issue," Moreno said, telling the NAHJ audience, 'You have to turn that around."
Hispanic journalists "tend to shy away from covering Hispanic issues because they do not want to get pigeonholed," commented ABC News Prime Time Live correspondent John Quinones. "Don't worry about that." *E&P
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