Commentary, National

Taking a Stand on Hatred and Trump: Thank You for Your Journalism, Jorge Ramos (Videos)


NEW YORK–(ENEWSPF)–November 6, 2016

By Denise Oliver Velez

In “Hate Rising” a KKK member tells Jorge Ramos, “White people are so much higher than any other race”

Election Day is almost here and voters in the U.S. are faced with a challenge. Very soon we will see if the electorate chooses to reject hate and fear, and instead opts to move forward—together. One of the major issues being discussed on Democratic and progressive sites since the start of the primaries has been the failure of the traditional media—especially those venues that purport to be news agencies—to challenge the rise of Donald Trump as the standard bearer for the Republican Party. We had zero expectations that Fox “News” would be anything other than a right-wing shill for bigotry. However, CBS, ABC, NBC, CNN, and MSNBC have for the most part been part of the problem. Traditional print media has also played along with the trend, though a few outstanding journalists have continued to dig into Donald Trump’s taxes, charities, bigotry, and business dealings.

Another area of major interest to those of us who are following the election closely is the Latino vote. People in the U.S. who are ethnically Hispanic or Latina/o are very diverse, and not a monolith. As a demographic category, many polling outfits and pollsters often exhibit a lack of understanding or inability to gauge and survey this multifaceted group. One major exception is Latino Decisions. They report:

According to the latest data from our national tracking poll, Latino Decisions projects that between 13.1 million and 14.7 million Latinos will vote in 2016. This estimate represents a three percent to five percent increase over the 2012 Latino turnout rate which, coupled with the dramatic growth of the age-eligible Latino population, will yield between 1.9 million and 3.5 million additional Latinos voters in 2016 compared to the 11.2 million who voted four years ago.

Latino Decisions also projects that 79 percent of Latinos will vote for Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton, 18 percent for Republican nominee Donald Trump, and the remaining three percent voting for other candidates. Clinton’s projected share is higher than both Latino Decisions’ estimated 75 percent Latino vote share and 71 percent exit poll share Democrat Barack Obama received during his 2012 re-election bid.

This upsurge in Latino voting can be directly attributed to the bigotry and xenophobia espoused and endorsed by the Republican Party and its candidate, Donald Trump. Key in the exposure and censure of their hateful. opinions has been Spanish-language media. Telemundo and Univision both launched massive voter registration and GOTV initiatives in conjunction with national Latino organizations. Most Americans who are not Latino or Spanish-speaking don’t watch Spanish language television and news, and fail to realize that its viewership often tops that of the major English-language networks. In 2013, Univision launched Fusion to reach a cross-over market of young English-speaking Latinos and non-Hispanics. One of the most familiar faces, for those of us who do follow Latino news and public affairs, is that of Jorge Ramos. Ramos, often referred to as “the Hispanic Walter Cronkite” is not Cronkite. He is himself, and is dedicated to practicing journalism. Ramos has been standing up to Trump and assiduously reporting on the election. Ramos’ documentary Sembrando Odio explores hate in the U.S. fanned by Donald Trump’s presidential campaign. It has also been released in English as Hate Rising. Take some time out to watch it below, and pass it on.

https://youtu.be/gOsRktPBNhI

In an interview with The Root, Ramos talked about his experience delving deep into racial hatred in America.

Univision anchor Jorge Ramos has been thinking a lot about hate recently. Ever since Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump ejected the Mexican immigrant, who is also an American citizen, from a press conference in August 2015 with a dismissive “Go back to Univision,” the experience has been on his mind. “Just a few seconds later, one of his followers told me ‘get out of my country.’ It was very clear to me from that experience that hate is contagious, so I spent the last nine months exploring hate in America,” Ramos told The Root of his experience last year.

That prompted Ramos to go to several corners of the United States…What Ramos found is that the number of hate groups in the country has grown immensely in the past year. Ramos told The Root that according to data from the Southern Poverty Law Center, the number of organizations linked to the Ku Klux Klan grew from 72 in 2014 to 190 in 2015, which was the same year Trump announced his campaign. “I think that he has allowed his racist remarks to become the norm,” Ramos mused. “Many people feel that if the candidate said it, why not them. He has given permission to many people to say things that are politically incorrect.”

The SPLC has called this more mainstream rhetoric that mimics much of what we hear on the campaign trail “the Trump effect.” And it is rhetoric that speaks to the small, radical segment of white non-Hispanics who feel as if their time as a majority is coming to an end.“When a group of white non-Hispanics, when they feel threatened and attacked and when they feel that they’re going to become a minority—which they will in 2044—they find leaders and messages that they can rely on. They found Trump and his anti-immigrant rhetoric,” Ramos added.

The Daily Beast explored how Trump ‘emboldened’ hate groups in America.

In the film, Ramos meets with an Imperial Wizard of the KKK on a dark Texas night and watches silently as a group of neo-Nazis in Ohio burn an enormous swastika. Like the Trump supporter who told him to “get out of my country,” white nationalist leader Jared Taylor tells Ramos he doesn’t belong in the United States. “Unless whites are prepared to exclude people, then they will be shoved aside,” Taylor says. It is a position rooted in a deep fear about losing what he views as his rightful place in the social order, and is eerily reminiscent of Trump’s desire to “Make America Great Again.”

Though he did not speak to Ramos for the film, Trump dominates Hate Rising—especially in the exclusive clip below when the host visits a group of children in Texas who fear the prospect of their parents’ deportation should Trump win the presidency. “My dad is from Mexico and if Donald Trump wins, he’s going back to Mexico and we’re going to be separated,” one 8-year-old boy says. This, Ramos tells me, is “The Trump Effect.”

The segment from the documentary where Ramos interviews children is heartbreaking—and infuriating. “The Trump Effect” on children and his unconstitutional attacks on birthright citizenship should be a clarion call for us all—not just families who would be directly affected.

https://youtu.be/Zlz8jTufW_M

In The Daily Beast article, Matt Wilstein asked Ramos, “Assuming Trump loses, do you think that the type of hate that you explore in the documentary will dissipate or grow stronger?”

Ramos responded:

What I know for sure is that it won’t disappear after Election Day because they feel emboldened, they feel strengthened, they feel validated by his campaign. So no, I don’t think hate will disappear and I don’t think hate groups will disappear after the election, regardless of who wins. And therefore, we truly need a national conversation on hate. And my proposition would be to start with immigration reform. If we can have a national conversation on immigration reform and find some sort of solution for Democrats and Republicans after the election, that would be a great first step. If we don’t do that, hate will continue. Hate is real. Hate is something that you can actually touch. I talked to victims: a Somali immigrant whose face was smashed with a glass of beer because she was not speaking English at the time, or a Mexican immigrant who was brutally attacked by two brothers simply because he was an immigrant. So, no, I don’t think this will end with the election. The damage has been done. And I think it will take many, many years to repair the damage.

Portrait Jorge Ramos twitter

Jorge Ramos

Those are important words we all must heed.

For those of you who don’t know Ramos’ background though you may recognize his face, here’s a brief bio.

Jorge Gilberto Ramos Ávalos (Spanish pronunciation: [ˈxorxe ˈramos]; born March 16, 1958) is a Mexican-born American journalist and author. Regarded as the best-known Spanish-language news anchor in the United States, he has been referred to as “The Walter Cronkite of Latino America”. Currently based in Miami, Florida, he anchors the Univision news television program Noticiero Univision, the Univision Sunday-morning political news program Al Punto, and the Fusion TV English-language program America with Jorge Ramos. He has covered five wars, and events ranging from the fall of the Berlin Wall to the War in Afghanistan.

Ramos has won eight Emmy Awards and the Maria Moors Cabot Prize for excellence in journalism. He has also been included on Time magazine’s list of “The World’s Most Influential People”.

His website gives more detail:

A survey conducted by the Pew Hispanic Center found that Ramos is the second most recognized Latino leader in the country. Latino Leaders magazine chose him as one of “The Ten Most Admired Latinos” and “101 Top Leaders of the Latino Community in the U.S.” The Miami Herald said, “As household names go, Jorge Ramos is huge…in Miami, Los Angeles and Houston, his newscast consistently beats out all the other networks for the top ratings”. More than 2 million people tune in daily to his newscast and almost a million to his Sunday morning political show. (The Nielsen Company) Jorge Ramos has been the anchorman for Noticiero Univision since 1986. In addition Ramos also hosts “Al Punto,” Univision’s weekly public affairs program offering in- depth analysis of the week’s top-stories and exclusive interviews with newsmakers. He is also the host of Fusion’s “AMERICA with Jorge Ramos,” a hard-hitting news program geared towards young adults.

His most recent book is “A Country for All; An Immigrant Manifesto” (Vintage/ RandomHouse). Ramos received the Latino Book Award in 2006. He is the author of ten books and bestsellers: “Behind the Mask”, “What I Saw”, “The Other Face of America”, “Hunting the Lion”, his autobiography “No Borders: a Journalist’s Search for Home”, “The Latino Wave”, “Dying to Cross”, “The Gift of Time; Letters from a Father”, and the children’s book “I’m Just Like My Dad/I’m Just Like My Mom” (HarperCollins) and “A Country for All; An Immigrant Manifesto”. Ramos has been instrumental in promoting literacy among Latinos. In 2002 he created the first book club in the history of Hispanic television: Despierta Leyendo (Wake Up Reading). He writes a weekly column for more than 40 newspapers in the United States and Latin America distributed by The New York Times Syndicate, provides three daily radio commentary for the Radio Univision network and collaborates with the largest Spanish- language website in the United States.

Ramos speaks candidly and fervently about taking on Trump in this interview from the CBC program The National.

Ramos said, “The best examples that we have of journalism in this country, in the United States, happen when journalists take a stand. Edward R. Murrow did it with McCarthy.”

Ramos also cites Walter Cronkite on Vietnam.

He firmly states, “We will be judged as journalists by how we responded to Donald Trump.”

My mentor in the Fordham University Lincoln Center Communications and Media Studies Department was veteran journalist and CBS news radio pioneer Joseph Denbo, who taught a unique course, “The Murrow Years.” It was from Professor Denbo that I learned to appreciate the importance of hard-hitting documentary journalism, and to cast a critical eye on news anchors who occupy cosmetic chairs in front of the camera, offering little to no substance or insight to viewers.

In my opinion, history will judge those news people who aided and abetted the rise of hate in the U.S. One would hope the history books will laud those journalists like Jorge Ramos, who fought to stem the tide.

Señor Ramos: muchísimas gracias.

Thank you.

Source: http://dailykos.com


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