By NACLA
Intro: While mainstream media have covered candidates’ pursuit of the Latino vote, the mostly white pundits on MSNBC, CNN, and other networks now articulate a narrative that sows racial division by explaining Obama’s lower Latino vote percentages as evidence of racial division and tensions between African Americans and Latinos.
Author: Leonard M. Baynes
The 2008 election has made history with the racial and gender diversity of the Democratic Party’s presidential candidates: a white woman, Hillary Rodham Clinton; an African American man, Barack Obama; and a Latino man, Bill Richardson. From the beginning, the media have promoted a two-person contest between Clinton and Obama, virtually excluding all other candidates.
Of these candidates, New Mexico governor Bill Richardson, a former
Clinton
cabinet member, was the most experienced, having served as United Nations ambassador (1997–98) and as energy secretary (1998–2001). Unlike the other Democratic candidates, Richardson has actual foreign policy experience, having successfully negotiated the release of hostages, soldiers, and prisoners in Iraq, Cuba, the Sudan, and
North Korea
. And as governor he has actual executive branch experience. Despite his qualifications, the mainstream media gave
Richardson
little coverage. After finishing fourth in both Iowa (2%) and
New Hampshire
(5%), he dropped out of the race.
Coverage of
Richardson
’s campaign reflects how the mainstream media generally cover Latinos and issues affecting Latino communities: They ignore them. The 2006 "Network Brownout Report" [1] of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists reports that less than 1% of the national newscasts discuss Latinos, and when they do, most of the coverage is negative and revolves around crime and “illegal immigration.”
Anchors like CNN’s Lou Dobbs, for example, became popular by attacking “illegal immigrants,” and according to the Anti-Defamation League [2], such verbal attacks against illegal immigrants have resulted in an increase of hate crimes against Latinos. The media focus on “illegal immigration” is so severe that a 1999 Washington Post/Kaiser/Harvard poll [3] showed that the vast majority of those polled believed that most Latinos in the United States are not U.S. citizens and are in fact “illegal immigrants.”
Richardson
ended his campaign before the February primaries and caucuses in which Latinos comprised a significant percentage of the vote. The two remaining Democratic candidates, senators Obama and Clinton, actively pursued the Latino vote, and
Clinton
won large Latino majorities in key battleground states. While mainstream media have covered candidates’ pursuit of the Latino vote, the mostly white pundits on MSNBC, CNN, and other networks now articulate a narrative that sows racial division by explaining Obama’s lower Latino vote percentages as evidence of racial division and tensions between African Americans and Latinos. The Clinton campaign contributed to this narrative with divisive comments by its Latino pollster, Sergio Bendixen, as reported by Ryan Lizza in a New Yorker article, titled “Minority Report” (January 21, 2008). Bendixen was qutoed as saying, “The Hispanic voter—and I want to say this very carefully—has not shown a lot of willingness or affinity to support black candidates.”
Clinton
failed to disavow and actually seemed to support these comments.
The Latino community is not monolithic. Latino voters may have voted for
Clinton
for a myriad of reasons. The most plausible explanation is that Latinos are loyal to a presidential candidate and her husband who have long ties to the Latino community. As young activists more than 30 years ago, the Clintons coordinated McGovern’s presidential campaign in
Texas
. In this capacity, they registered many Latino voters in
South Texas
. In addition to Bill Richardson, the
Clinton
administration had two other prominent Latino cabinet members: Henry Cisneros, who served as secretary of Housing and Urban Development, and Federico Peña, who served both as secretary of Transportation and Energy. Clinton’s campaign made history by hiring Patti Solis Doyle as campaign manager, the first Latina to hold such a position, and it secured key Latino endorsements in key battleground states like those of L.A mayor Antonio Villaraigosa and
California
assembly speaker Fabian Nuñez. Meanwhile the mainstream media also fail to note the many examples of Latino voters supporting African American candidates in past elections. During the 1988 presidential primary season, for example, Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition won a majority of the vote in Latino enclaves in New Mexico and a substantial minority of the vote in Latino enclaves in
California
. On the local level, large percentages of Latino voters have supported the following African American candidates for mayor: Thomas Bradley in Los Angeles; Harold Washington in Chicago; David Dinkins in New York; Wellington Webb in Denver; Ron Kirk in Houston, and Cory Booker in
Newark
. Each of these mayors won a majority of Latino votes in their campaigns. In addition, two African American members of Congress, Charles Rangel of New York and Maxine Waters of
California
, represent districts with large percentages of Latino voters. In fact, Congresswoman Waters’s district is majority Latino.
Latino loyalty to
Clinton
is no different from early African American support for her candidacy. Before the
South Carolina
primary, most polls showed that she had the support of a vast majority of African American voters. It was only after both Bill and Hillary made arguably racially insensitive remarks about Obama and Martin Luther King that African American voter moved solidly in Obama’s direction.
Obama has been on the national stage for only four years and has been virtually unknown to the Latino community. But despite Latinos’ lack of familiarity with Obama and Clinton’s historical advantage, Obama’s Latino vote percentage has consistently grown. He received only 26% of the Latino vote in Nevada, the first key battleground state with a large Latino population, but received 53% in Connecticut, 52% in Illinois, 44% in Arizona, and 53% in the Latino strongholds of northern
Virginia
.
Diversity in media ownership and newsrooms would likely improve such stilted election coverage. A recent Free Press study [4] study showed that only 2.9% of the broadcast media is owned by Latinos, while another study [5] by Ball State University’s Professor and media researcher Bob Papper showed that only 7.2% of broadcast TV news directors, and only 3.8% broadcast radio news directors, are Latino. The study also showed that only 8.7% of the employees in the broadcast television newsroom, and only .7% of the employees in the radio broadcast newsroom, are Latino. Increasing Latino and other minority diversity in every aspect of the mainstream media could help to provide fairer and more informed political discourse than what we have seen to date.
Leonard M. Baynes is director of the
St. John’s
University Ronald H. Brown
Cener for Civil Rights and Economic Development, and professor of law.
Published on Media Accuracy on
Latin America
| A Project of NACLA http://mediaaccuracy.org
pubdate: Apr 4 2008
|
E-Newsletter 
