Hispanic Voices: Is the Press Listening?

Abstract

Jorge Quiroga, an investigative reporter for WCVB-TV in Boston, has spent most of his more than twenty years in journalism as a "beat" and investigative reporter. Little if any of his professional background has been devoted to covering issues of special concern to the Hispanic community. Yet when he came to the Joan Shorenstein Center as a Fellow in the fall of 1993, he wanted to take the opportunity to think, study, and write about the intersection of the press and the Hispanic community that represented his own ethnic and cultural background. As he reflected on his own life, as he studied the academic literature, and as he interviewed members of the press and leaders of the Hispanic community, he became increasingly convinced of the community gate-keeping function that the media served, and equally convinced that the gates had yet to be opened substantially to those of Hispanic background. This study, which combines the skills and experiences of Quiroga as journalist with his academic researches as a Fellow at the Shorenstein Center, is at one level an important analysis of the role of the media in continuing to deny members of the Hispanic community full membership in the American political and social community in which they reside. Even more broadly, it is an important case study in the role of the media in community definition generally, and we hope that it receives the careful reading and wide attention it so richly deserves.