Breaking Up ‘White-Bread’ Look of TV Commentators

Watching the Los Angeles riots on television, I was shocked the way the news professionals mishandled and misinterpreted the civil unrest that exists in the South-Central community.

Some news anchors and reporters were calling the rioters “thugs,” and in one report the word “illegals” was used.

We must understand that Los Angeles is a culturally diverse city. However, based on the television coverage during those trying days, it seemed that the socio-economic problems presented by the media were black-and-white race related.

The voice was Rosemarie Vasquez’s in her first commentary on KABC-TV Channel 7, one of the stations that had engaged in precisely the behavior she had been describing.

With those words spoken on Aug. 12, Vasquez, a 48-year-old Mexican-American who operates a jewelry business in the southeastern Los Angeles community of Montebello, had made history: She became the first Latina-American commentator on an English-speaking television station here.

“I think she’s the first one in the country,” said Esther Renteria, who heads the National Hispanic Media Coalition.

The only Latin-American to precede Vasquez was male. Pete Moraga delivered weekly opinions on a wide range of topics for KCBS-TV Channel 2 a few years ago. Vasquez is more focused. Although given a free hand to chose topics, she has tended to concentrate on ethnic-related issues.

It’s noteworthy that with Vasquez joining Gloria Allred and Susan Carpenter McMillen at Channel 7, the station now has three female commentators. That’s three more than any other station in town.

Just as important, Vasquez “helps Channel 7 break up their white-bread look,” added the crusading Renteria. “The thing that I’ve been telling TV stations is that most of them don’t look the way America looks.”

Vasquez looks the way a burgeoning segment of America looks, especially in Los Angeles County, where U.S. Census figures list the Latino population as nearing parity with the Anglo community, 37.8% to 40.8%, with African-Americans and Asian-Americans trailing with 10.5% and 10.2%, respectively.

Latino-Americans are a diverse group, although you rarely can prove it by local newscasts. “They see us as illegal immigrants,” Renteria charges. “Their news coverage is so isolated and their Rolodexes so outdated. They don’t call Hispanic judges or black doctors when they want an opinion. They don’t call people of color who are university professors to comment on a story. They don’t break down the fear barriers.”

Thus, Channel 7--although it traditionally airs not only more opinion but also more diverse opinion than its competitors--was bucking custom when it did the smart and fair thing by making Vasquez a commentator.

It happened this way.

A Montebello political and education activist who founded an organization that has raised $100,000 for college scholarships, Vasquez was invited by Renteria to sit in on a meeting that Renteria’s media watchdog organization had scheduled with Channel 7 management last summer.

The outspoken Vasquez asked KABC-TV news director Roger Bell: “Why is it your people can easily say ‘Korean-American’--even though I can guarantee you that all the Koreans out there are not Americans--but they still call us Latino? At least give us the same respect that you’re giving others.”

Bell found Vasquez, well, memorable. “At the time, we were looking for additional commentators,” he said, “and she impressed me as someone who was not afraid to speak her mind. She was very vocal and had the kind of poise it would take to be on television.”

Bell called Vasquez three weeks later and asked her to write two commentaries on any subject. He liked what she wrote. Then came the auditions, then the offer.

“They started calling me to be on once a week,” Vasquez said. “Finally it got to the point that Roger said that whenever I had something to say I should call them on Monday and they would fit me in during the week.”

Averaging one a week, Vasquez’s 2 1/2-minute commentaries run during the 5 p.m. newscast on Wednesdays or Thursdays.

Bell was right about his newest commentator being vocal. Although a TV novice and an untrained writer, she has no problem making herself understood.

She called the education cuts in the state’s new budget “outrageous and inhumane,” for example, wondering why “public officials continue to play partisan political games at the expense of our children’s education.”

She charged that the city’s Mexican-American community has been “ignored historically, from Mayor Tom Bradley’s appointees to Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition and the L.A. Times’ references that minority has meant African-American.”

And she found “frightening” a Superior Court judge’s recent ruling that the Cal State University system must charge undocumented immigrants out-of-state costs instead of the lower tuition paid by residents. “Doesn’t it make better sense to educate rather than incarcerate?” she asked.

Bell said the immigrant-tuition commentary prompted the greatest response to Vasquez, most of it negative.

“I do pour out what I really feel,” Vasquez said. “It’s passionate. It’s real. It’s not fake. I do my homework. I don’t hold any punches. I’m very direct. These are very serious matters.”

Basically, said Bell, “we hired her for the message.”

A message that, in at least one instance, Channel 7 itself has taken to heart. Concerning Vasquez’s complaint about the practice of saying African-American or Korean-American but not Latino-American or Mexican-American: “It’s now our policy with all minorities,” Bell said, “to add ‘American’ and give them the benefit of the doubt.”

It was widely assumed that should Bruce Herschensohn lose his U.S. Senate race to Rep. Barbara Boxer, KABC-TV would give him back his former job as a commentator.

Herschensohn lost, but Channel 7 may not be giving.

“He hasn’t contacted us,” Bell said, “but there is no expectation at this time that we will be hiring him back.”