Commentary: I’m politically neutral as a journalist. Should I be neutral as a Mexican?

Qué onda Latinx Files readers. I’m Jack Herrera, one of the L.A. Times’ national correspondents, and I’m filling in for Fidel this week.

We’re ying and yanging it — Fidel is a Texas Mexican who lives in California, and I’m a California Mexican who lives in Texas; Austin, to be exact.

I moved to Texas two years ago for a few different reasons. Like Fidel, I’ve got family roots in South Texas. If you track my patrilineal line back, you will find Herreras living here for a long time. We were on the Río Bravo in Laredo when it was just a river, before it was a border. Living in this history and close to all my family in San Antonio has brought me some harmony.

But there’s another reason I moved. Times are changing in the Rio Grande Valley, one of the heartlands of Mexican American identity. For the first time since the end of the Civil War, Mexican Americans there have started electing Republicans to office.

Why is that happening? Wading into that question means entering an angry current of debate. It’s the breakdown of machine politics, or it’s gerrymandering; it’s a return to true Mexican family values, or a betrayal of them.

There’s a high-stakes battle to control this narrative. Part of the reason anyone votes Democrat or Republican is because the people around them are voting Democrat or Republican. Whether it reflects the truth or not, both the GOP and the Dems have a vested interest in claiming “Latinos all want to vote for us!”

That’s what made Univision’s recent interview of former President Trump so heady. It was the first time the current GOP presidential front-runner was interviewed on their airwaves, and the segment itself lacked the station’s customary abrasive style.

For Democrats, there’s a real fear that Univision — by far the biggest player in Spanish-language news — has begun “cozying up to Trump.” That’s how the actor John Leguizamo put it last week. Arguing that the interviewer, Enrique Acevedo, didn’t do enough to fact-check Trump, Leguizamo wrote: “For Univision to remain a credible source, executives must now prove to viewers that it is capable of upholding the principles of journalism. They must reaffirm their commitment to fact-checking and balanced, unbiased reporting.”

Mike Madrid, a longtime Republican campaign consultant (but strident Never Trumper), said that if Democrats lose friendly coverage from Univision, it could be disastrous for their chances of winning the White House, which requires Democrats to win not just a majority but a big majority of Latino voters — we’re talking over 60%, at least.

Madrid disagreed with Leguizamo that the Univision debacle came down to unacceptable bias. He called Democrats’ cries of unfairness “nonsense.”

“When you’ve been benefiting from media bias, it makes balance feel like betrayal,” Madrid told me this week.

The Univision fracaso has helped me realize something. There are twin questions I have to answer as a journalist and a Latino.

First, as a reporter, I must answer the journalistic objectivity question. This question isn’t just how I get my readers and sources to trust me; it’s how I can trust myself to get the most accurate version of a story. If I walk into a room with preconceptions, I might miss what’s actually in front of me.

Second, in the fight over Univision, I’ve realized that, as a Latino reporter, I also contend with the question of (what I’ll call) Latino objectivity. Does being a Mexican American mean subscribing to certain politics? As a Latino, are there certain positions that are opprobrium with my heritage?

I can only answer that first question about journalist objectivity, precisely because the decisions I’ve made as a reporter mean that, officially, I have no opinion on the second question on Latino objectivity.

When it comes to the question of objectivity, I believe in a healthy ecosystem. There can be reporters who have their own politics and agendas, as long as they’re clear about them and are beholden to facts (and getting fact-checked) above all else.

But you also need some reporters who have made the decision I have: to try to work without an agenda besides truth-seeking; and to at least aim for objectivity.

Reporting in Latino communities across the country — especially in Texas — has taught me how to get my own head set. Our communities are diverse, unwieldy, raras, and, if I want to report as accurately as I’m capable, I have to try my best to leave my prejudgment at home when I report.

Maybe there’s a lesson there in how we should think about Latinos as a pluralist political group, but I’m honestly not sure. Latinidad is, at its essence, an organizing principle: It’s a way we take people who come from over 20 different countries, every race, countless ethnicities and hundreds of Indigenous nations and try to make us into a coherent group.

At its most noble, this looks like deep conversations we have with each other, and with ourselves: What makes us us?

But I want to share a lesson I’ve learned specifically as a Latino reporter, one that makes me suspicious of any ennobling narrative.

At many publications — certainly at this one, and at Univision — you’ll find journalists debating the philosophical question of objectivity, getting to its root and trying our best to get our readers the most accurate and useful version of what’s going on.

But why any publication decides to take any specific stance on objectivity, and to market itself as balanced or partisan, often comes down to a question of money, more than we might like to believe.

The concept of journalistic objectivity is fairly young: In the English-speaking world, most newspapers have been, historically, nakedly partisan.

Certainly, part of the reason certain newspapers (like this one, founded in 1881) have committed to objectivity is because of a strong, moral commitment to the free exchange of ideas — liberalism, in its classic sense.

But there’s also a market dynamic in action: If you market yourself as nonpartisan, more of the population is a potential customer.

Conversely (and this is something anyone who has ever turned on cable news has no doubt learned) if you brand yourself as partisan, you can attract a core group of extremely loyal consumers.

What’s going on at Univision is a reflection of both these currents. In the Latino market, two things are true: There are (1) Latino consumers interested in conservative content (ie an interview with Trump) and (2) Latino consumers amenable to conservative campaign messaging (ie., political ads that the Trump campaign might buy on Univision airwaves).

Like other news platforms, Univision is struggling, but it’s still a major power. How Univision chooses to reflect politics in Latino communities will itself affirm those politics; the decisions Univision makes about how to portray us will affect how we define ourselves.

Maybe that’s why there’s some discomfort with the fact that a trio of Univision executives met with Trump in Mar-a-Lago before his on-air interview.

How we define Latinidad might also have more to do with money and backroom deals than we care to acknowledge.

Advertising to Latino communities is a multibillion-dollar business, and large corporations have an easier time appealing to us if they can convince us we’re a coherent group (did you use Fabuloso or Vicks VapoRub today?). It’s the same story with political campaigns. Both parties have a vested interest in convincing us that voting for them isn’t just the right thing to do, it’s the Latino thing to do.

What defines Latinidad isn’t just a philosophical debate. It’s an argument with dollar signs attached to it.

That might sound conspiratorial. But hey, it’s a good fit for Fidel’s top-shelf pun. This is the Latinx Files, after all.

(Jackie Rivera / For The Times; Martina Ibáñez-Baldor / Los Angeles Times)

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