Our apologies to the mainstream media.
You won't read that here very often.
Why now?
Univision hosted a Democratic presidential candidate forum Sunday, September 9th. Though the highest rated of any of the forums, that didn't translate into a higher level of mainstream press -- or little press -- attention. In fact, it appeared to get more attention from the ratings than from the actual forum.
Little media -- we'll be kind and won't name names -- showed more interest in pre-coverage for an upcoming forum hosted by Slate, Arianna Huffington and others than in any kind of coverage of the debate that Univision televised.
Not this past Friday, but the week before, a professor on a campus we were speaking at, who is Latino, listened to us talk about our planned feature and said what we really needed to do was to provide a forum for Latino voices to weigh in. Great idea.
He came up with a list. It included organizations and individuals. He noted some academics that were always dying to weigh in and complaining to him that they never got asked for quotes.
C.I. and Ava were against it. They pointed out we were trying to raise awareness about the big DC event the following day and about the illegal war so we didn't have time to waste on e-mails.
We ignored their reservations.
We wrote 52 e-mails and they went out later that morning.
This was going to be great.
The Univision debate was historic and we'd be writing a piece on it and doing what the mainstream media didn't (with few exceptions) -- providing Latino voices.
That feature didn't run last week.
Our apologies to the mainstream media because we have assumed that they naturally choose to shut out Latino voices. That may not be the case. Latino voices may choose not to respond.
That's what happened here.
Background on the e-mail. We were brief (and the professor helped with the basic e-mail) and noted we were looking for a quote for a feature we would be doing about the Univision broadcast, how it reached a larger TV audience (that's not counting the radio broadcast or the webstreaming) than any other forum. It was basic, it was to the point. (With one academic, we went beyond that because the professor said the way to hook her was to mention another topic, which we did.)
And the replies? 31 academics didn't reply. 7 did promising quotes by the end of the work day that Friday. Those promised quotes never emerged.
Well, maybe they prefer to complain that no one ever asks their opinion and responding might have prevented them from whining in the future?
Univision didn't bother to respond. We wrote in English and in Spanish (twisting Ava's arm to get an e-mail in Spanish). Maybe there's a third language we should have tried?
We wrote organizations. And we'll name one person in particular. Not just because Ava thought she was a "huckster" (that's putting it nicely) but because we think she's a lousy spokesperson.
Lizette Jenness Olmos. She is the Communications Director for LULAC. While others responded begging off (including one organization that made it clear they don't get along with Univision), she wrote back, "Yes we can provide that. What is your deadline?" She wrote that Friday September 14th.
We were on another campus and C.I. was giving Jim a dirty look because Jim was hunched over the laptop while he should have been listening to students speaking about the illegal war. But Jim knew a batch of e-mails would go out in about 15 minutes and had wanted to check to see if anyone had responded and had a question?
He replied that the deadline was Sunday morning. He also noted that if that wasn't enough time for LULAC, they could send a comment next week and we'd make a point to note it then.
Apparently Lizette Jenness Olmos is in the business of making promises she doesn't keep which means she really shouldn't be in the position of "Communications Director." Not only did we not have a quote by last Sunday morning, she never bothered to send anything last week.
On behalf of LULAC, she apparently feels that the Univision forum wasn't anything worth commenting about.
We could note the nun (that Ava said, "Oh please, that woman's a witch") that blew us off as well. She promised a quote and never delivered.
Does this happen all the time?
Maybe it does. If that's the case, the reason Latinos weren't asked to weigh in on the forum by the mainstream press -- while White, Jewish men could be found in piratically every article -- may have to do with the fact that people don't waste their time attempting to get a quote from those who blow them off.
If that was the case, our apologies to the mainstream media.
We thought the forum was worth noting. Worth celebrating. But instead, last week, we offered
"On Univision Dodd & Edwards play War Hawks." That's because those promising quotes never delivered. If that's how they respond to the mainstream media as well, expect to read a lot more White, Jewish males explaining how Latinos think. And don't, as we did, blame the mainstream media for that.