The Latino Fight for Air Time

When KNSD-TV (Channel 39) reporter Bernard Gonzales was offered a lucrative new job recently with a station in New York, he excitedly asked Channel 39 management to let him out of his contract. Such requests are routinely granted. This time, though, station management said no.

It’s not just that his bosses believe Gonzales is a good reporter, they believe he’s a good Latino reporter. And those are rare, television executives say.

“Hispanic reporters are very valuable and there are not that many to choose from,” Channel 39 General Manager Neil Derrough said in a recent interview, declining to elaborate on Gonzales’ case.

Local stations managers often say it is difficult to attract and keep quality Latino reporters when asked about the slim number of Latinos on the air in San Diego. None of the local TV news operations have more than one or two Latinos on the air, and none of the key weekday anchors are Latino.

Although other minorities also are underrepresented on local news programs--which is true in most markets nationwide--the lack of Latinos is a particular problem in San Diego County, where Latinos make up 20% of the population, according to the most recent U.S. census.

“The biggest problem is trying to get Hispanics in the business that we can bring up to reporter and anchor level,” KGTV (Channel 10) General Manager Ed Quinn said in response to a recent survey by San Diego County, which found a significant lack of Latinos in all local news operations.

Latino reporters and members of Latino media organizations say this claim of a lack of quality Latino reporters is, to put it mildly, pure bunk. Henry Mendoza, executive director of the California Chicano News Media Assn., says he could find a “half-dozen” qualified Latino reporters with just a few phone calls.

Although they don’t go so far as making accusations of racism, many industry observers believe that TV news operations are still wary of putting ethnic faces and accents into key on-air roles.

“There is still a mentality that you can only have so many of a certain type in a newsroom,” Gonzales said.

There is no doubt that good Latino reporters are in demand. And therein lies one of the more profound dichotomies of modern television news: Latinos say they are underrepresented on the air, while television news executives say they can’t get enough of them.

“I’ve never had a qualified Hispanic reporter I couldn’t place,” said agent Conrad Shadlen, who represents Gonzales and many other television news personalities nationwide, including several other Latinos.

Good Latino reporters “are scarcer than hen’s teeth,” Shadlen said. “They’re the hottest items--all minorities, Hispanics and blacks, especially.”

In the last year, Shadlen has moved two of his Latino clients from KFMB-TV (Channel 8) into bigger markets--sportscaster Artie Ojeda went to Los Angeles last year, and, last month M.G. Perez left for San Francisco. Although Channel 8 management doesn’t comment on such matters, sources say the station is actively seeking a Latino replacement for Perez.

Part of the reason for the station’s fervor to replace Perez with a Hispanic or other minority may stem from the fact that Channel 8’s operating license was in limbo for more than a year recently after two black groups challenged its minority hiring practices. But the noticeable dearth of Latinos on the air certainly also has influenced Channel 8’s attitude, as well.

It makes good business sense to have a fair representation of the Latino community on the air, Channel 10’s Quinn pointed out. Although a large portion of the Latino population watches Spanish-language television, the advertising and marketing industries are increasingly targeting what increasingly is being viewed as a large and important population for all stations in San Diego.

“In our surveys, news and information programming is considered the most important part of television among Hispanics,” according to Roger Sennott of Market Research Inc.

However, the representation of Latinos on the news in San Diego is clearly lagging behind the advertising community’s interest in the Latino population. Latino media leaders say talent is readily available, but that is the crux of the dispute.

“I attended the National Association of Hispanic Journalist’s annual convention, and the number of qualified, mature Hispanic journalists is very low,” said Shadlen, who theorizes that television journalism is not a career traditionally encouraged in Latino communities.

The demand for Latino reporters makes those that display a propensity for the business valuable commodities. In just five years, Gonzales’ career has blossomed. After being an educator for 10 years, he did a short stint in the KCBS-TV newsroom in Los Angeles as a newsroom assistant. He then spent six months working on the air for Derrough in San Luis Obispo before moving to San Diego with Derrough four years ago.

But Gonzales points out that his meteoric rise also illustrates the downside of how Latinos are often treated within the business. In the spring of 1989, he was rushed into the role of weekend anchor at Channel 39, even though he had less than a year of on-air experience. After negative reviews of his performance, he lost the anchor seat after less than a year to another Latino reporter, Vic Salazar.

Latinos in weekend anchor slots are not uncommon locally or nationally, but San Diego has yet to see a Latino in one of the more heavily promoted and salaried weekday anchor positions.

San Diego is considered a mid-sized market, and the most experienced and established anchors are either in bigger markets or they remain in their established communities, Channel 10 News Director Paul Sands said. “Good Hispanic reporters are so valuable that they are kept by stations or locked into good contracts.”

Things are changing, Sands argues. In smaller markets there are “more Hispanic reporters than any other ethnic group,” he said. “But they are all young or on their first or second reporting job and not quite ready to get into a top 25 or top 35 market.”

Like many news organizations nationally, Channel 10 has a minority reporter training program. Through the program, reporter Dan Rascon is working with the station for a year, learning the trade, and the station will help him to find a job when the year ends in June, Sands said.

But Mendoza says that most stations don’t try very hard to find and train Latinos beyond token efforts. Good Latino reporters “are out there, but they need to be sought,” he said.

Mendoza claims that stations appear far more willing to give a blonde, blue-eyed, attractive woman a chance to develop than a minority. “They won’t take the same chance” on Latinos, and “different criteria” are placed upon Latino reporters, he believes.

“Look in any newsroom and there are weak white reporters, and that’s allowed,” Mendoza said. “Stations are reluctant and unwilling to invest the same type of resources into developing the images of Hispanics” as other reporters and anchors.

Channel 10’s Sands disputes the claim, calling it a “specious statement.” It’s “the same type of canard bandied about blacks, the same type of canard bandied about by women and Asians. I get tired of hearing the same old refrain,” Sands said.

Station managers don’t argue with the numbers, but they say their efforts to hire minorities are sincere.

“I don’t have any magic answers” to explain the discrepancy between efforts and actual numbers of Latinos on the air, Derrough said. “I only know what we do and I feel our (recruiting) is fairly decent. Can we do more? Sure.”

Certainly, part of the problem can be attributed to the general state of the business. Because of current economic difficulties, many experienced reporters who have been laid off in major markets are now applying for jobs at smaller markets, which makes it difficult for young Latinos to find entry level jobs.

“You have to be diligent in finding people at a level where they can be trained,” Derrough said.

Another part of the problem, some say, also may be the minimal Latino representation in upper management. The survey released last month by the County of San Diego Human Relations Commissions found that only 6% of managers in electronic media (both radio and television) are Latino, only a minimal change from a survey three years earlier. But Gonzales believes that, too, may change as more Latinos come up through the ranks.

“It’s a given that if people are hiring fairly we will get (management representation),” Gonzales said.

And Gonzales says he knows what it will take to make significant change.

“You have to realize we’re talking about commercial TV,” he said. “What it will take to change it is the people who own and run stations, and the consultants who tell them who is watching, when they can be convinced that people who are watching and consuming products have different shades of skin, that is when change will occur.”

Mendoza agrees. Television executives are guided by their perceptions of the audience, he said. It will take time to change those perceptions.

“You don’t change viewing habits overnight,” he said. “You have to approach it from a long-term perspective.”