Ignored, unheard and misunderstood: Media ghosting Latinos in the newsrooms

By Jesus Loza

While Hispanics made up 31.4 million, or 11.5 percent, of the nation's 1999 population, they are expected to triple and number 106 million in 2050, accounting for 24.3 percent of Americans, according to a report from the U.S. Census Bureau population projections.

But not all Latinos are the same.

While some just made it to the United States from their home countries, some others are American citizens who have lived in the United States for decades. The approximate 60 million Latinos in the United States have separate cultures, religions, and even economic backgrounds.

Photo Courtesy from Pew Research Center statists on Latino population.

This melting pot makes it hard for the media newsrooms to cover all these groups, or even understand their needs, experts from Los Angeles Times. However, that is only the tip of the iceberg regarding Latinos being underrepresented in the media newsroom.

Selene Rivera, a Los Angeles Times reporter for over ten years, spoke about Latino underrepresentation in the media with passion.

“The Latino community is growing exponentially,” said Rivera. “Covering the community is crucial to make their needs public and met by our political representatives.”

“In my opinion, Latinos are underrepresented in the media newsrooms because they are not ‘cut from the same cloth,’” she said. “There is a melting pot that needs our attention, but many of us have not grasped how different these groups are, and we just categorize them as one.”

According to Rivera, to incorporate more news about the Latinos community in general, the business news industry needs to go as far as to diversify its teams and hire more Latinos in its newsrooms to better serve their communities.

“Even within the LA Times, there are constant talks as to how we can cover these Latino communities and even the need to hire more Latino reporters that understand this melting pot,” she said.

A recent report from UCLA confirms that Latinos are severely underrepresented in the Los Angeles Times opinion pages, as well as their editorial boards, even when the newspaper covers a region that is almost 50 percent Latino in Los Angeles alone, and 40 percent in California.

Photo courtesy from UCLA report on how Latinos are being underrepresented in La Times opinions pages.

For example, 96 percent of Times op-eds published during the last 17 months made no explicit mention of Latinos or Latino communities. The survey, which covered the period from January 2020 to May 2021, also discovered that Latinos made up just 11 percent of the Los Angeles Times editorial board, where important policy discussions take place.

As the survey was published, Sonja Diaz, Founding Executive Director of UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, stated during a Zoom presentation that as national debates around democracy, the economy, the response to COVID-19, immigration and environmental justice take place, “papers like the Los Angeles Times have a responsibility to ensure that Latinos are given a proportional and fair opportunity to shape the conversation.”

“Our study shows that there is an urgent need for the Los Angeles Times to make its editorial pages more inclusive and representative of the community it covers,” Diaz added.

Brenda Castillo, President and CEO of the National Hispanic Media Coalition, argued during a Zoom meeting presenting the report that it is well documented that opinion sections shape public opinion, and public policy, making it especially shocking when voices as significant as the Latinos are left out.

“Invisibility has consequences,” Castillo said. “Disinformation and inaccurate portrait of Latinos in this has been tied to events such as mass shootings that occurred in El Paso, Texas, and Gilroy California, two heavily Latino communities.”

The UCLA report reveals that in the New York Times only seven percent of the staff are Latinos, in The Washington Post only five percent of employees are Latinos, whereas in the Los Angeles Times only 17 percent of reporters are Latinos.

In terms of television news, there has not been a report. However, some experts working in the field believe that the coverage of different Latino issues is not enough.

Rosa Loza, a news producer for NBC with more than 15 years of experience, is one of them.

“I think there is confusion when it comes to Latino needs. For example, many producers and anchors believe that all Latinos are by far undocumented immigrants or democrats by far. So, they may try to cover certain news that not all Latinos will agree or will need,” she said.

“I believe the news industry has to be objective,” she continued. “Our job is to present the news about how it is outside and not how we view it personally. There is a need for training our managers, editors, and anchors. We also need to focus on important news and not on ratings.

According to the U.S. Government Accountability Office, Latinos have been significantly underrepresented not only in the media business, but also in cinema, television, or newsrooms since 2014.

Photo courtesy from U.S Govt Accountability Office which estimates Latinos percentages in these industries.

Efigenia LiraZarate, a news producer and writer for Univision, agree with Loza.

“I think that there are at least three main news TV stations that cover the Latino community in Spanish in the Los Angeles area, but even so, it is never enough because this community is too large and diverse. I think the TV stations in English should have more and better coverage than they do now,” said LiraZarate.

“Only in Los Angeles County, about 50 percent of the population is Latino, and we don't see enough representatives in the council,” she said.

LiraZarate feels especially disgusted when the media portrays the Latino community as delinquents, drug dealers, or criminals.

“We rarely present positive stories about Latinos,” she added. “Since I work in a TV station covering news in Spanish, we normally talk about different cultures in the Latino community, which is a daily task in the newsroom.”

By 1970, the Hispanic population grew 592 percent in the 2014 report, primarily because of new immigrants from Latin America — especially Mexico.

“Between 2000 and 2010 alone, Hispanics made up more than half of U.S. population growth,” according to a report by the Pew Research Center published the same year.

The underrepresentation of Latinos in the media has even come to the attention of politicians.

In an interview with the Associated Press published September 20, 2021, U.S. Rep. Joaquin Castro, D-Texas, implored Hollywood studio directors’ and journalism leaders to include the different Latino perspectives.

Castro added that American media, including print journalism, has relied on stereotypes of Latinos.

“None of this has been an effort to tell people exactly what to write but to encourage that media institutions reflect the face of America. Because then we believe that the stories will be more accurate, more reflective of the truth, and less stereotypical,” Castro said.

Ivan Bernal, an actor from Mexico, raised in Texas and has had experience in the acting business for over 12 years, shares some light on how Latinos are underrepresented in the media and news industry.

“Working in the industry, I see casting notices-requests all the time for the same type of roles, and it’s a bit frustrating, to be honest. I feel Latinos come from all backgrounds and educational levels, yet we’re put into the same box,” said Bernal.

“Most of the news articles or TV news reports I see about Latinos show us uneducated, weak, or low income. And this all thanks to the media who are giving Latinos a bad representation, when in fact many are doing great things like opening businesses, getting into politics, and founding nonprofit organizations,” said Bernal.

Bernal believes that newsrooms need to start including more Latino voices from all cultures and more inclusion of all races.

Antelma Cardoso Chavez, a senior majoring in Psychology and minoring in sociology at California State University, Dominguez Hills (CSUDH), feels that the news coverage must be fair for all groups.

“As a DACA recipient myself, I can understand partially the underrepresentation of my group,” Cardoso Chavez said, pointing out that even immigrants have different issues with their legal status that are not being talked about.

“I believe that there needs to be more representation of Latinos in the news and any form of broadcasting in general, but the representation has to be fair,” said Cardoso Chavez, a member of the group E.N.F. (Espiritu de Nuestro Futuro), an immigrant student alliance at CSUDH.

The Psychology major is convinced that stereotype’s purpose in the media is a token of discrimination and racial intentions, which only continue the divide and increase the opportunities to continue profiling the Latinx community and all other communities as well.

“We see very few achievements of Latinx individuals in the media due to the thirst for news; a student’s achievement is not news, but robbery or murder is, and that is why there are such misconceptions about the community,” she said.

“There are very few political figures one can connect with, especially in a social system based on competition. Stereotypes are issues experienced by all populations. We have seen it with Spanish media during the Black Lives Matter protests,” she said.

A recent report published June 2020, by Pew Research Center, reveals that adults of all races, including Hispanics, believe the news media misunderstand their social and economic class.

Hispanic Americans are slightly more likely than the other two groups to believe that their interests are the most misunderstood aspect of their culture (26 percent, compared with 16 percent of black and 17 percent of white adults).

Jorge Jimenez, a Senior Vice-President at Monterrey Music & Promotions Inc. who has experience with journalism, television news production, and radio, said he couldn’t agree more with the report.

“The Hispanic media in the USA represents (or should I say, misrepresents) 62.1 million Hispanos in the present,” said Jimenez.

“Very little or nothing at all helps the Hispanic community, many of them feeling misunderstood. Meanwhile, instead of solving the issue, radio stations, television networks and channels, press and digital magazines and newspapers, make their best efforts to get a good piece of the multibillion-dollar pie and to promote their agendas,” said Jimenez.

The producer shares his views about the two most popular Spanish news networks that represent Latinos in their communities: Univision and Telemundo.

“Both networks offer a variety of programs with no cultural or social value. Even worse, their content reflects and portrays very little of our culture and values; their programs in prime time are mostly series about crime, drugs, and narco culture. Some Spanish-speaking people feel offended when they are called rapist drug traffickers and assassins but some love to be portrayed that way in the movies and tv programs,” he said.

Jimenez believes that social media has a political agenda to keep the Hispanic community and other minorities unaware and ignorant of their reality, dictated it as they please.

This reporter tried to contact NBC, Univision, and Telemundo but none of them responded to the inquiries.

In response to the UCLA report, the LA Times issued a press release.

Photo Courtesy from Twitter a press released by LA Times

“We have been actively working to increase diversity and representation in the newsroom in the opinion section and across organizations for years,” read the press release sent by Hillary Manning, vice president of communications.

“We welcome continued dialog with the community as we strive to make reflective of our diverse and dynamic region. We’re always open to improvement and bringing a wider range of voices to the opinion pages. We encourage those interested to consider recommending op-ed writers or submitting an op-ed themselves,” said the press release.

In a commentary by Rep. Castro, “The missing Latino narrative in media,” published in September 2021, he stated that this issue will not fade away over time without a meaningful change in representation.

“From statehouses to the halls of Congress, lawmakers are focused on this issue and working hard to advance the inclusion of Latinos in American media and Hollywood,” Castro said.

“Working with the Congressional Hispanic Caucus, we’ve held meetings with the New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Meredith, Conde Nast, the Hearst Corporation, Comcast/NBCUniversal, Telemundo, Univision, Disney, Netflix, Amazon Studios, the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, the Sundance Festival, and many more. The purpose of these engagements has been to push the industry on their practices and directly confront company executives on their systemic exclusion of Latinos,” Castro said.