JORGE
RAMOS - THE LEADER OF THE PACK
 Jorge Ramos, the Mexican-born news anchor
for Univision is one of the most important media personalities in the U.S. He was the first news reporter that interviewed
President-elect George W. Bush after the GOP convention. He is known for considering an interview as “war” and strives to
make “the powerful tremble.”
Mr. Ramos began his television career at
Televisa, Mexico’s  largest television conglomerate. His career as a reporter, Ramos is proud to say,
ended when on the third story he was assigned, his supervisors censored his script and
asked that he rewrite it according to company dictates. Mr. Ramos refused and resigned.
He sold his Volkswagen Beetle for $2,000 and
migrated north to Los Angeles. There he spent
a year as a waiter and cashier at a local restaurant. “I was a very bad waiter and got lousy tips,” Mr. Ramos recalls.
“I made $15 a day. The only good thing
is that I got one meal a day free.”
In 1984, a year after his arrival in Los
Angeles, Mr. Ramos got his  first television job at KMEX, as a reporter and anchor. Univision transferred him in 1986 to the
network’s morning news and interview program, Mundo Latino. By November of that same year, Mr. Ramos was the male anchor at the 6:30
p.m. Noticiero Univisión. He has been there ever since. He points out that both when he was hired by
Univision in 1986 and today, the company was partially or totally owned by Televisa, as it
is today, and at no point has it ever tried to censor what he or anyone else in the
newscast has said. “Jaime Davila promised me that in 1986 and he kept his word,”
Mr. Ramos said.
Mr. Ramos, who considers himself “still
an immigrant” in the United States works hard at his many endeavors. He does a daily radio news program on Caracol
Radio, writes a column that is syndicated by 35 newspapers in the United States and Latin
America, a weekly column for Univision.com, and has written three books.
 “I am very
disciplined,” he admitted. “I tell
everyone I am a 10 to 11 writer. That is from
10 to 11 a.m. and from 10 to 11 p.m. every weekday.” That is when he writes his columns, and his books. The rest of his time he devotes to his wife, Lisa,
born in Puerto Rico, of Cuban parents and to his two children, Paola, a teenager, and
Nicolas, who is two and a half years old.
It seems that the trial by fire for all
Spanish language anchors is their experience in hot spots around the world, especially
Latin American. Mr. Ramos is well known for
having been to dangerous trouble zones, in and out of Latin America. Furthermore, as with Maria Elvira Salazar of Telemundo,
Mr. Ramos is known for the aggressive style of his interviews, one he says has evolved
from his readings of Oriana Fallaci. He still
says that he has not been allowed to return to Colombia since he interviewed
then-President Ernesto Samper in Bogotá and asked him if his government had been
infiltrated by money from the drug cartels. “Each
time we even talk of going back to Colombia, we get ugly floral arrangements, like
wreaths, to remind us of what would happen if we went back there,” Mr. Ramos said.
During the 2000 Presidential campaign, Jorge
Ramos was featured in the Wall Street Journal. The article outlined his achievements
as a media personality and based on a Hispanic Trends poll identified him as one of the
most influential Latinos.
Guillermo
I. Martinez wrote “The Four Aces of Hispanic America.” |
