The aftermath of the immigration protests for Latino journalists

As I sat down for a Tuesday workshop for journalists covering immigration, I thought about the recent months’ raucous debate about undocumented immigrants and the lessons that we as Latino journalists should learn from the experience.

For me, the thousands of immigrants who took to the streets from Washington, D.C. to Los Angeles last spring did more than showcase the nascent Latino political force; it revealed the weaknesses in my chosen profession.

As I settled in my chair at the National Association of Hispanic Journalists session, I remembered news photos of undocumented workers taking over the streets – images that I believe changed the stereotype of the timid immigrant scared of revealing his or her identity. In the face of this collective sense of Latino empowerment, we might have witnessed an emerging Latino social movement uniting different nationalities.

But alas, we have not, at least not in the pages or news casts of the mainstream media.

The absence of Latino coverage makes it clear that more Latino journalists are needed. It’s a need that’s evident even in the most everyday of encounters.

Just last Monday, while doing interviews on a pier off Pompano Beach just north of Fort Lauderdale, I began interviewing a 23-year-old local. As we chatted, I told him that I have been living in Massachusetts for several years, a puertoriqueña in New England. At that, he put aside his fishing gear to say: “(I) didn’t know there were also Spanish people in the Northeast.”

The comment startled me, but made me even more pleased than ever to take part in a student journalism project at NAHJ’s annual conference. The project, where I’m producing content for NAHJ’s latinoreporterdigital.org, has reinforced my conviction that Latino journalists can more accurately portray the Latino community; we live and understand our own issues.

Back at Tuesday’s immigration coverage workshop, it dawned on me that we not only need more Latino journalists, we need more Latino editors.

In the newsroom, we face two hurdles: editors and ourselves. Editors, the gatekeepers, play a crucial role by filtering what gets covered and what gets omitted. Because they determine what the priorities are, the focus should also on staffing news rooms with more Latino editors.

In the wrong environment, Latino journalists themselves can also misrepresent the Latino community. Under pressure, Latino reporters sometimes avoid covering Latino issues so that we are not branded as an ethnic novelty act. Latino journalists justly want to be recognized for their ability to cover anything at any time, but at the expense of alienating the Latino communities who consequently view them as “whitewashed.”

The Latino journalist as an interpreter of the Latino community introduces the issue of advocacy in a career that values above all objectivity. This is a murky and controversial topic, but still important for a more profound discussion of Latino issues in the media. NAHJ should focus on the experiences of Latino journalists in addition to encouraging more Latino presence in the media.