COLUMN: Ramos is right to stand up to Trump and Univision

Univision has been under fire for giving a friendly interview to Donald Trump.

The harshest criticism has come from their lead anchor and most prominent journalist Jorge Ramos. He wrote about it in his weekly column published Saturday.

“We cannot normalize behavior that threatens democracy and the Hispanic community, or offer Trump an open microphone to broadcast his falsehoods and conspiracy theories. We must question and fact-check everything he says and does,” Ramos wrote. “That’s why it is very dangerous to fail to confront Trump. And that’s why it is our moral obligation to confront him every time there’s a journalistic opportunity to do it. But I understand that not everyone agrees, and I open the debate here.”

Let’s not forget that in 2015 Trump kicked Ramos out of a press conference for asking pressing questions about immigration. Trump yelled at Ramos and one of his handlers told him to “go back to Univision.”

This Univision interview only serves to normalize Trump to Latino voters, who will be crucial in the 2024 presidential elections. California is also home to 8 million, or one quarter, of the nation’s eligible Latino voters, more than any other state, according to the Pew Research Center. Latinos comprise 36% of the state’s adult population but just 25% of likely voters,  according to the Public Policy Institute of California. More than a third of voters in Los Angeles are Latino.

There are almost daily news reports about Latinos turning to the Republican party. I believe some of that is overblown and the bigger issue is lack of voting or apathy. 

Of California registered voters, only 14 % of Latino voters were considered frequent voters, meaning they voted regularly in at least five of the seven most recent elections. But white voters were 71% of frequent voters, according to an August poll from the University of California Berkeley Institute of Government Studies. 

It’s alarming to see Univision, the largest Spanish-language network in the U.S., give Trump a platform with no pushback and no challenging questions.

As a journalism professor and a journalist with 25 years experience, who has published at national media outlets, I agree with what Ramos said in his letter.

“Of course we should not take sides, and we are obliged to broadcast the messages of all candidates in the 2024 presidential election. But at the same time we cannot surrender our responsibility to ask hard and precise questions. That’s what journalism is for. These journalistic principles apply to everyone,” he wrote.

We have to ask the hard questions and challenge a candidate when they make comments or take stances that are racist and xenophobic. But I don’t believe there are two sides to white supremacy and bigotry. It’s never justified. As journalists, we have to shine a light on it and call out our leaders who espouse racism, xenophobia and all forms of bigotry.

The interview questions by Univision’s Enrique Acevedo were very general and did not challenge Trump on his past racist statements calling Mexicans “rapists” and “criminals” at the start of his presidential campaign. He did not challenge Trump’s immigration policy that led to the separation of children from families. Indeed, the journalist allowed Trump to blame the family separation policy on Obama. And he gave plenty of air time for Trump to call migrants from Central America criminals echoing what he said at the start of his campaign.

Trump said in the interview about migrants from El Salvador: “And they’re not sending us their best. Remember, they want to keep their best people. They want to keep the people that are making their country run. They’re sending us MS13. They’re sending us gang members from all over the place. They’re sending us people that have mental problems from mental institutions. Good people are coming in, too, But we have tremendous numbers of murderers. The criminals are coming in, they’re walking through Mexico.” 

Here are some of the questions the Univision should have asked Trump:

• Why do you only think “some” of the migrants are good people? Don’t you think that is offensive to the vast majority of immigrants, who studies have documented, are indeed law abiding?

• An estimated 5,000 children were separated from their parents under your administration. Why do you deny this when it’s been documented by journalists, in the courts, by civil rights organizations and the Biden Administration? 

• What happened to your border wall?  According to a Customs and Border Protection report, your administration built 52 miles of new primary wall systems and 33 miles of new secondary wall systems where there were none before. I thought you promised Mexico would pay for that. Why couldn’t you make them?

Of course the journalist should have pushed harder on the indictments. He could have asked Trump if he violated tax laws, or how he encouraged the insurrection on Jan. 6 that led to the deaths of at least seven people. It was if the journalist had a set list of questions that they read and didn’t ask any follow up.

Univision failed the Latino community and the American public in giving Trump an hour of unchallenged air time, basically an infomercial. 

This candidate is not an ordinary candidate. Trump has espoused views that are anti-immigrant, anti-Latino, anti-Muslim, anti-woman, anti-LGBTQ and anti-democratic. Journalists should press him hard on those questions and counter him with facts when he lies.

It’s very possible that Trump can win again. We have to make sure he is held accountable for his words and actions. The media cannot be complicit in this.

I sometimes show a TED Talk in Spanish by Ramos in my bilingual journalism class. In it he speaks about the obligation of journalists to challenge power. 

“We journalists are obligated to take sides in certain circumstances – in cases of racism, discrimination, corruption, lying to the public, dictators and human rights. We need to set aside neutrality and indifference,” Ramos said.

He explained the concept of “contrapoder” or to go against power. That’s where Ramos said journalists should stand. “I learned that neutrality, fear and silence often make you an accomplice in crime, abuse and injustice. And being an accomplice to power is never good journalism,” Ramos said.

The executives at Univision were accomplices in helping Trump continue to spread falsehoods and bigotry. Ramos stood up to censors as a young journalist in Mexico and kudos to him for writing against the Trump interview.

Ramos is right and Univision failed to ask Trump tough questions. We need more journalists to challenge the powerful, including their own networks, and for Latino voters to be informed and engaged so they do not vote against their own interests. 

If not, we could be looking at Trump 2.0 and it will be worse than the first time.