The prominenT anchor of The Top-raTed SpaniSh-language newScaST—and hoST of a newS Show on The engliSh-language, millennial-TargeTed fuSion neTwork—haS maSTered The arT of poliTe confronTaTion wiTh Some of The world’S moST powerful people.

by eugene carolynP h o t o g r a P h s b y a r t s t r e i b e r

P. 66

Univision’s J o r g e r a m o s

Takes a sTand

68 d e l t a s k y / j u n e 2 0 1 6

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 devel-opments—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. Out of those, 23 million are eligible to vote.” Out of those 23 million, he thinks about 13 million of them will cast a ballot. “Here’s the thing,” he 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 say we, I mean Latinos.” ¶ Trump famously ejected Ramos from a news conference in Iowa last summer, telling Ramos (known by many as the Walter Cronkite of Latin America) to “go back to Univision.” So here we sit, in the heart of that mysterious province: Univision, which, as the millions of Hispanics living in the United States already know, is one of the biggest Spanish-speaking com-munities in the world—even if it’s not actually a sovereign nation. The massive Spanish-language network is headquartered in Man-hattan but is based, for all intents and purposes, in Miami. The vast majority of its production, busi-ness and employees are located in Doral, Florida, a suburb about a 35-minute drive from South Beach. ¶ We’re sitting in Ramos’ small of-fice with a glass wall separating us from a ruthlessly air-conditioned 15,000-square-foot newsroom lined with flat-screen TVs. With his

silver hair and wiry build, he looks

more like a Latino Anderson Cooper than a Latino Cronkite. An hour away from the 6:30 p.m. start time of Noticiero Univi-sion, he’s not wearing his tie yet. He looks relaxed when he says, “After Trump told me [to go back to Univision], one of his followers immediately said, ‘Get out of my country.’ And I said, ‘Well, I’m also a U.S. citizen.’ ”

a fter starting out as a reporter in Mexico City and emigrating to Los Angeles in 1983,

Ramos landed the lead anchor position at Univision in 1986 and has since covered nearly every major global event and interviewed nearly every major Latin American leader and every sitting American president since George H. W. Bush. His audience reaches even beyond his 2 million nightly U.S. viewers: Noticiero Univision is also broadcast to 13 Hispanic nations outside of the United States. “We can report about a corruption case in Mexico, or in Guatemala or in Colombia,” Ramos says, “and they’ll pay attention, simply because it’s coming from the United States and we have no censorship here.”

In 2013, Univision, in a joint venture with ABC News, founded Fusion, an English-language network aimed at a young and di-verse America. Ramos is so trusted and popular that Fusion

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 main-stream America understands the issues that affect Latinos.”

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.

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d e l t a s k y / j u n e 2 0 1 6 71

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 differ-ently, even with non-Spanish speak-ers who didn’t have any prior experi-ence 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 pho-tos 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 heel-digging 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 p a g e 1 4 9

“I love beIng a JournalIst. It’s the only professIon In the world whose descrIptIon Includes beIng both rebellIous and Irreverent.”

Regardless of the medium, there al-ways has been something heroic about Latin American journalists—perhaps because so many of them wind up tragically killed or exiled by the cor-rupt 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.”

What do you think you mean to U.S. audiences, particularly during an election season? “My vision of America is a diverse Unit-ed 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.”

w hile Ramos’ book is as geo-graphically 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

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 bet-ter 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.”

l ike his heroes, Ramos sees himself as a crusader for truth. During his years covering Latin America, he says he’s articulat-

ed three core destabilizing trends: po-litical 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 func-tional, you see millions of people living in poverty.” He says you can’t underes-timate 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 con-fronting these powerful forces on cam-era. 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 min-utes, what’s happening in a country,”

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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 jour-nalist? “I think the most important social re-sponsibility 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 respon-sibility 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 argue that you cannot be 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 any-one. And then go home and take my kids to the park . . . .”

Yeah, you get to go back to Miami!“And go to the supermarket, with 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 mil-lion 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 presi-dential campaign—given some of the candi-dates’ 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 con-sequences. 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 undocument-ed immigrant, eventually that will change our conversation on immigration.”

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