Day 11 – Latinos in the Media

As broad as this topic is, one point still sticks out in my head when it comes to anything about the media - we are responsible for what gets plays on TV, radio and print. The media is owned by a handful of billionaires that got around the system and owned all outlets in which information gets dispersed in this country. What's being displayed in the media has to satisfy the owners of the media corporations including Time, Disney, Viacom, etc. of course - but rest assured that if ratings are high enough they will show anything that will draw audiences.

Which leads me to my point - can we blame anyone but ourselves for the slightly risen but no where near as accurate place in the media? For a while we only had Univision and Telemundo for our Spanish speaking audiences, but recently with the rise of the new age Latino and more importantly the English native Latinos these networks were not as satisfactory. Watching shows on some younger generation networks like mun2, SiTV and MTV Tres - I can't help but notice how far away we are from being recognized as a real brand. Many of these shows are arguably a Latino version of some show already in existence. 

Again - these are the shows that we are in to - Reality TV, competitive TV (i.e. project runway, top chef) - and this is whats shown on TV. It's still very standard that the Latinos that I see when I walk out of my apartment, onto the train, into downtown Manhattan, are not the Latinos I see on these shows. Not even the ones on "our" networks. Are we just not popular? Even George Lopez's show seems to take a rating hit not because he's Latino but because after the spice of a stereotypical Latino has died down --- you realize thats all you were drawn to. Once he tries to be serious or deep, that's no longer as entertaining... Even Mencia became old news shortly after his stint with fame.

So where does that leave us? The only other source I can be proud of is print - great Latino authors are being recognized for their talents like Junot Diaz and Julia Alvarez, paving the way for young Latino writers. It sucks though that print is also changing with the move to digital media and digital book reading (i.e. kindle, nook, iPad, etc.) for these authors however it also gives a new opportunity to our youth - start a blog, get your story out there. There are about 2 to 3 sterotypical Latinos that get exploited all the time when there are about 100 more kinds of Latinos still unheard of --- (did you see Soledad O'Brien's special? Yawn~)

As with most things, nothing is set in stone and we have the power to change the media given to us. So press on my Latino family - the fight isn't over yet.

~Z