Univision ’s
J o rg e R am o s
Takes
a Stand
by eugene carolyn
Photographs by Art Streiber
P. 66
The prominent anchor of the top-r ated Spanish-l anguage ne wscast—and
h ost o f a n e ws s h ow o n th e En g li s h - l an g uag e, m i llen n ial-targ e ted Fu s i o n
ne t work— has mastered the art of polite confrontation with some of
the world’s most powerful people.
i n o n e h o u r , Jorge Ramos will get behind the desk at Noticiero Univision, the
nightly news show he’s been hosting since 1986, to talk about what happened in the
world today. This morning, for instance, Donald Trump released financial details
about how the United States will pay for the wall he wants to build between the
United States and Mexico. Ramos’ audience, which is larger, younger and way more
bilingual than most U.S. news audiences, will no doubt be extremely interested in these developments—and in the particular way that Ramos will give it to them. But right now, the anchor
doesn’t want to talk about today: He wants to talk about November. ¶ “You have 55 million
Latinos in America,” he says. “We’re
talking 18 percent of the population.
“I think the most important
Out of those, 23 million are eligible
social responsibility
to vote.” Out of those 23 million, he
we have as journalists is
thinks about 13 million of them will
to confront those who
cast a ballot. “Here’s the thing,” he
are in power. “
says. “In the last election, Obama
won by less than 5 million votes. So
we can decide who is going to be the
next POTUS.” He pauses. “When I
more like a Latino Anderson
say we, I mean Latinos.” ¶ Trump
Cooper than a Latino Cronkite.
famously ejected Ramos from
An hour away from the 6:30 p.m.
a news conference in Iowa last
start time of Noticiero Univision, he’s not wearing his tie
summer, telling Ramos (known
yet. He looks relaxed when he
by many as the Walter Cronkite
says, “After Trump told me [to
of Latin America) to “go back to
go back to Univision], one of his
followers immediately said, ‘Get
Univision.” So here we sit, in the
out of my country.’ And I said,
heart of that mysterious province:
‘Well, I’m also a U.S. citizen.’ ”
Univision, which, as the millions
of Hispanics living in the United
States already know, is one of the
fter starting out as a
biggest Spanish-speaking comr ep or te r i n Me x ic o
munities in the world—even if it’s
City and emigrating
not actually a sovereign nation.
to Los Angeles in 1983,
Ramos landed the lead anchor
The massive Spanish-language
position at Univ ision in 1986
network is headquartered in Manand has since covered nearly
hattan but is based, for all intents
ever y major global event and
interviewed nearly every major
and purposes, in Miami. The vast
Latin American leader and every
majority of its production, busisitting American president since
ness and employees are located in
George H. W. Bush. His audience
Doral, Florida, a suburb about a
reaches even beyond his 2 million
nightly U.S. viewers: Noticiero
35-minute drive from South Beach.
Univision is also broadcast to 13 Hispanic nations outside of the
¶ We’re sitting in Ramos’ small ofUnited States. “We can report about a corruption case in Mexico,
fice with a glass wall separating us
or in Guatemala or in Colombia,” Ramos says, “and they’ll pay
attention, simply because it’s coming from the United States and
from a ruthlessly air-conditioned
we have no censorship here.”
15,000-square-foot newsroom
In 2013, Univision, in a joint venture with ABC News, founded
lined with flat-screen TVs. With his
Fusion, an English-language network aimed at a young and diverse America. Ramos is so trusted and popular that Fusion
silver hair and wiry build, he looks
68 d e l t a s k y / j u n e 2 0 1 6
Top, Left and center: Courtesy of
Univision; Right: AP Photo/Carolyn
a
clockwise from top left:
Jorge Ramos interviewing Mexican
President Enrique Peña Nieto;
Ramos and Noticiero Univision
co-host Maria Elena Salinas;
A 2012 town hall with President
Obama moderated by Ramos and
Salinas; Ramos walking through
the Univision newsroom.
executives immediately gave him the hosting gig on its flagship
news magazine, America with Jorge Ramos.
Since 1989, Ramos’ co-anchor on Noticiero has been Maria
Elena Salinas. “He realizes now that unless you say it in English,
it doesn’t count,” Salinas says. “That’s an exaggeration, but he
knows we don’t want to preach to the choir. We already know
what our problems are. But we want to make sure that mainstream America understands the issues that affect Latinos.”
“I love being a
journalist. It’s the
only profession
in the world whose
description
includes being both
rebellious and
irreverent.”
Says Ramos: “Latin America does
not exist for most Americans.” But it
does for Univision and Fusion; both
news operations are now housed in a
sparkling new facility. In many ways,
it’s the house that Jorge Ramos built.
The new space allows him to shoot
Noticiero Univision at night and work
on America in every spare minute.
“When we were programming the
new channel, our research showed
that our potential audience thought
that the media game was rigged,”
says America’s executive producer,
31-year-old Dax Tejera. “They thought
the powerful and the journalists on
television were too closely aligned.”
But Ramos consistently tested differently, even with non-Spanish speakers who didn’t have any prior experience with him. “They perceived that
he would go in and ask the tough
questions. He was fearless. He didn’t
look like everybody else.”
In Ramos’ office, there are photos of his family, his Venezuelan
girlfriend and his two kids. In the
corner, there’s a bookcase filled with
books by other Latin journalists, as
well as volumes of art criticism and
an imposing edition of Cervantes’
Don Quixote. (“We all had to read it
in college,” he says.) There is a copy of
Ramos’ newest and 12th book, Take a
Stand, a behind-the-scenes digest of
the major interviews of his career, a
roll call of his influences and a sort of
manifesto for his own brand of heeldigging combativeness. And although
he writes about his deep admiration
for Barbara Walters, you get the sense
that many of Ramos’ role models are
from the print world. In Take a Stand,
he name checks two print heroes
most English-speaking readers have
never heard of: the swashbuckling
Oriana Fallaci and the fearless Elena
Poniatowska.
C o n t i n u e d o n pa g e 1 4 9
d e lta s k y / j u n e 2 0 1 6
71
w
hile Ramos’ book is as geographically expansive as the
writings of someone such
as Fallaci, it doesn’t come to
the same hard-edged conclusions. There
is no doubt, however, that in his 30 years
of reporting in Latin America, he has
developed countless alternatives to the
average American’s world view, though
Ramos points out that U.S. politicians
differ from their Latin counterparts in
one definitive manner. “I’ve confronted
many Latin American presidents with
corruption,” he says. “And it’s funny how
many Latin American presidents cannot
answer the question, ‘How much money
do you have?’”
Can you answer that question? How much
money do you have, Jorge Ramos?
“I think I could [laughs]. If I were to run
for president, if I were to run for public
office, I think I should tell the people
how much money I have.”
In your book, you advise journalists to
EMISSIO
NS
What do you think you mean to U.S.
audiences, particularly during an election
season?
“My vision of America is a diverse United States. It’s a place where immigrants
are accepted and where tolerance rules.
And the reason is very simple: In 2055,
the white, non-Hispanic population will
become another minority. That’s where
we are going. That’s my theory.”
l
ike his heroes, Ra mos sees
himself as a crusader for truth.
During his years covering Latin
America, he says he’s articulated three core destabilizing trends: political corruption, failed democracy and
the drug trade. “We take democracy for
granted here. In very few countries you
see democracy working properly,” he
says. “Even where democracy is functional, you see millions of people living
in poverty.” He says you can’t underestimate the damaging effects of the drug
trade, and its black market connection
to North American demand. “You have
20 million Americans who have used
some kind of drug in the last month.
There has to be an industry south of the
border that supports that addiction,” he
says. “And that’s what many countries,
especially Central America and Mexico,
are suffering right now.”
There is undeniable glamour in confronting these powerful forces on camera. And Ramos is so good at it: locked
in verbal chess matches with deeply
complicated figures, in Spanish and now
English, whether Fidel Castro, President
Obama or Ted Cruz. Ramos is tasked
in a 30-, 20- or 5-minute interview with
conveying to the viewer the symbolism
of power in a showdown with truth, and
while this is so emotionally satisfying,
new media dynamics, as evidenced
by Wikileaks or the freshly released
Panama Papers, can disseminate 450
million pages of hard-core information
all at once, with the real world potential
to topple governments over a weekend.
Ramos is more active online than ever
now—he writes essays and Fusion has
been covering big-top events like the
Iowa caucuses on Facebook Live—but
Ramos’ chosen format remains the
televised interview.
“My role is to show, in just a few minutes, what’s happening in a country,”
O
UP
Regardless of the medium, there always has been something heroic about
Latin American journalists—perhaps
because so many of them w ind up
tragically killed or exiled by the corrupt political states they cover. Is this
why Ramos’ brand of sophisticated
contention has made the 58-year-old so
popular with such a massive audience?
Early in Stand, he brims with affection
for his work. “I love being a journalist,”
he writes. “It’s the only profession in
the world whose description includes
being both rebellious and irreverent.
In other words, being a journalist keeps
you forever young.”
INDOOR KART RACING
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visit the bathroom of the person they’re
interviewing. I won’t be able to wander into
your bathroom here at Univision, so can I
ask, are you a millionaire?
“I can only say that I’m doing much better than my parents did in Mexico. And
that’s part of the American dream. And
that’s why we came to this country, not
only to have a better life—this country
gave me the opportunities that my
country of origin couldn’t give me—but
also so my kids could have a better life.”
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Univision’s
Jorge Ramos Takes
a Stand
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he says. “To show, in just a few questions,
what it’s like to be a president or a dictator.
You have the luxury of doing an interview
for an hour.”
What is your mission as a broadcast journalist?
“I think the most important social responsibility we have as journalists is to
confront those who are in power. I mean,
I believe in what we learn in journalism
school. I think objectivity is important—if
five people die, you say five; if it’s red, you
say red—but going beyond the basics, I
think the most important social responsibility that we have is to challenge those
who are in power. And I’m not seeing that,
for instance, a lot in this presidential
campaign.”
Images are so loaded with different words and
meanings that sometimes, I would think, it
might be easy to project an agenda. Where
do you see the line between journalistic work
and advocacy?
“I wou ld a r g ue t h at you c a n not b e
30 years on the air if you are not credible,
if you disseminate propaganda. Now, if
what you’re asking is if I am a journalist
or an activist, what I would say is that I’m
just a journalist who asks questions. But
on certain issues, you have to take a stand.
When it comes to racism, discrimination,
corruption, public lies, dictatorships and
human rights. On those six areas, as a
journalist, you have to take a stand.”
I’ve always been enthralled by the bravery of
Latin journalists—there seems to be so much
more at stake.
“I have to think of this every single day.
I do my job. I ask tough questions to anyone. And then go home and take my kids
to the park . . . .”
Yeah, you get to go back to Miami!
“And go to the supermarket, w ith no
bodyguard. Had I done the same thing
in Mexico, living in Mexico, and mostly
in the provinces outside of Mexico City,
it would be a different story. Since 1992,
according to the Committee to Protect
Journalists, more than 80 journalists
have been killed in Mexico. I mean, I am
incredibly grateful for the opportunities
that this country gave me. If I had stayed
in Mexico, just look at those numbers.”
Right.
“And I can say the same thing about any
other Latin American country. You can
say, 80 journalists have been killed in
Mexico. But if you go to El Salvador, it’ll
be the same story; Colombia, it’ll be the
same story; Venezuela would be the same
story. Fortunately, we live in a country in
which you don’t die if you question the
president. I’ve spoken with President
Obama on many occasions. We don’t agree
on the fact that he has deported 2.5 million immigrants. However, I talk to him
and nothing, absolutely nothing happens.
Not only that, I get invited to talk to him
again, over and over again.”
Do you think the tone of the current presidential campaign—given some of the candidates’ divisive statements—is a reaction to
our more politically correct climate?
“Well, no, but I think words matter. I think
words are important. And words have consequences. I’ll give you an example. We’ve
been fighting for many, many years not to
use the word illegal when people refer to
undocumented immigrants. And we think
it’s important, because no human being is
illegal. So, I am convinced that if we are
able to change that, and use undocumented immigrant, eventually that will change
our conversation on immigration.”
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