{"id":1239,"date":"2016-01-27T10:39:50","date_gmt":"2016-01-27T10:39:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/mediatico\/?p=1239"},"modified":"2016-01-27T16:19:12","modified_gmt":"2016-01-27T16:19:12","slug":"donald-trump-vs-jorge-ramos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/mediatico\/2016\/01\/27\/donald-trump-vs-jorge-ramos\/","title":{"rendered":"Donald Trump vs. Jorge Ramos"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>This week, Medi\u00e1tico presents an interesting think piece by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.uh.edu\/class\/spanish\/faculty\/sisk_c\/\">Christina Sisk<\/a>, Associate Professor at the University of Houston and author of <\/em><a href=\"http:\/\/www.uapress.arizona.edu\/Books\/bid2308.htm\">Mexico, Nation in Transit: Contemporay Representations of Mexican Migration to the United States<\/a><em> (2011), on the Donald Trump\/Jorge Ramos confrontation from the summer of 2015. Medi\u00e1tico was delayed in posting Sisk\u2019s piece because it was largely overtaken by the many subsequent Trump news stories (the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.usatoday.com\/story\/news\/nation-now\/2015\/10\/28\/woman-transforms-pumpkin-donald-trump\/74729820\/\">Trumpkin<\/a> anyone?) and Trump\/Other confrontations which have followed in the months since the Presidential candidate&#8217;s\u00a0diatribe against Mexicans (made during the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/news\/post-politics\/wp\/2015\/06\/16\/full-text-donald-trump-announces-a-presidential-bid\/\">announcement of his presidential bid)<\/a> and Trump\u2019s ejection of the Univision news anchor from a press conference. However, the publication of Sisk\u2019s piece remains timely now more than ever given Trump\u2019s continued divisive pronouncements (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/commentisfree\/video\/2016\/jan\/06\/dont-let-trump-fool-you-rightwing-populism-is-the-new-normal-video\">against women, Muslims, the diasabled, Jewish people<\/a>), his increasing lead against other Republican Presidential candidates in the GOP polls, and \u2013 for those Medi\u00e1tico readers resident in the United Kingdom, his planned trip to the U.K. which has sparked protests from ordinary British people (100,000 of whom have signed a petition to ban him from entering the U.K.) and politicians, who last week <a href=\"http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.co.uk\/2016\/01\/18\/donald-trump-ban-uk-mps-parliament-debate_n_9010746.html\">debated<\/a> whether or not to bar him from the country.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"Apple-style-span\"> <em>Here Sisk\u00a0explores what is at stake in Trump&#8217;s pronoucements against Mexicans, what Ramos was trying to question him about at\u00a0that fateful press conference and also the\u00a0corporate and ideological operations at play\u00a0in the Trump\/Ramos showdown.\u00a0<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n<p><span class=\"embed-youtube\" style=\"text-align:center; display: block;\"><iframe loading=\"lazy\" class=\"youtube-player\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/0XAI44F34aU?version=3&#038;rel=1&#038;showsearch=0&#038;showinfo=1&#038;iv_load_policy=1&#038;fs=1&#038;hl=en-US&#038;autohide=2&#038;wmode=transparent\" allowfullscreen=\"true\" style=\"border:0;\" sandbox=\"allow-scripts allow-same-origin allow-popups allow-presentation allow-popups-to-escape-sandbox\"><\/iframe><\/span><\/p>\n<p>by Christina Sisk<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span class=\"Apple-style-span\">When Mexico sends its people, they\u2019re not sending their best. [&#8230;]. They\u2019re sending people that have lots of problems, and they\u2019re bringing those problems with us. They\u2019re bringing drugs. They\u2019re bringing crime. They\u2019re rapists. And some, I assume, are good people.<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>In the material of some\u00a0of his campaign <a href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/us-news\/2015\/jul\/02\/donald-trump-racist-claims-mexico-rapes\">speeches<\/a> as\u00a0Republican candidate for president of the United States and as part of his campaign strategy outlining his goals,\u00a0Donald Trump is reverting to the old stereotype of the Mexican immigrant as a criminal and rapist. In one speech Trump points to Francisco Sanchez, who is the alleged murderer of a woman in San Francisco, as the reason\u00a0why the U.S. border with Mexico should be sealed shut. Sanchez was deported five times and was a felon prior to the murder that he allegedly committed.<a href=\"#_ftn1\" name=\"_ftnref\">[1]<\/a> Trump\u2019s use of Sanchez as representative of Mexican immigrants\u00a0is problematic because it reduces the \u00a0characterization of all Mexicans to the\u00a0crime of one individual. The stereotype does not arise in a vacuum but rather follows a tradition of\u00a0American culture\u00a0including cinema of portraying\u00a0Mexicans as bandidos, bandits, gang members, and drug dealers.<a href=\"#_ftn2\" name=\"_ftnref\">[2]<\/a> Trump\u2019s comments about Mexican immigrants have prompted a number of key figures in both politics and the entertainment industry\u00a0 (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.theguardian.com\/tv-and-radio\/2015\/dec\/30\/gael-garcia-bernal-donald-trump-mexicans-hate-discourse-mozart-in-jungle\">Gael Garcia Bernal<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/america-ferrera\/thank-you-donald-trump_b_7709126.html\">America Ferrara<\/a>) \u00a0to question the candidate\u2019s reductive characterization of Mexicans, but Jorge Ramos is the only one who has\u00a0directly questioned Trump on why\u00a0this characterization is part of\u00a0his political platform.<\/p>\n<p>When Ramos spoke up at Trump&#8217;s\u00a0press conference he was trying, as a Mexican journalist living and working in the United States, \u00a0to ask Trump about his position against legalizing eleven million undocumented immigrants. But Trump reacted by having Ramos thrown out of the press conference, (supposedly because the journalist did not wait his turn to ask his question) and then pretended not to have thrown him out at all. \u00a0When Ramos began speaking, Trump told him, \u201cGo back to Univision\u201d<a href=\"#_ftn3\" name=\"_ftnref\">[3]<\/a>\u00a0implying that Ramos should go back to Mexico, but the presidential candidate also demonstrated that he views Spanish language media as foreign and not\u00a0part of the United States mediascape. Ramos may be Mexican by birth, but he is also a U.S. citizen. And Univision, the largest of a number of\u00a0Spanish-language networks in the U.S.\u00a0may broadcast predominantly Mexican content (Televisa telenovelas in its prime-time slots), but it broadcasts from the U.S. to a U.S.-based Latino population. Since the\u00a0confrontation between the two, some (<a href=\"http:\/\/talkingpointsmemo.com\/livewire\/bill-o-reilly-jorge-ramos\">including Fox commentator Bill O&#8217;Reilly<\/a>) have accused\u00a0Ramos of undermining\u00a0his role as a journalist by becoming an\u00a0activist. Such speculation attempts to discredit Ramos by suggesting he is not\u00a0an objective observer.<\/p>\n<p>As Ramos himself asserts, he is not an activist; he represents Univision and its joint venture with Disney, Fusion, which have a different ideological following to other networks such as CNN or the conservative Fox News. In many ways, Ramos is not that different from his counterparts, the\u00a0news anchors at the other networks, because all of the networks represent different ideological positions, whether they like to admit it or not. Although Univision<a href=\"#_ftn4\" name=\"_ftnref\">[4]<\/a>\u00a0speaks largely to a Spanish speaking audience, it also rivals\u00a0with the other major networks for this\u00a0audience, and through\u00a0Fusion and its multimedia platform, is\u00a0attempting to make inroads into the\u00a0English language\u00a0 market.<a href=\"#_ftn5\" name=\"_ftnref\">[5]<\/a> As an anchor and a journalist of a major network, Ramos reaches out to his viewers and his supporters and does so as part of a corporate media strategy that caters to a Spanish-speaking audience, one that supports immigration reform. While Ramos\u2019 questioning of Trump points to a distinct ideological position in comparison to his colleagues, it is also a commercial tactic to gain and capture an audience. While this places him on the left of the English-language networks, the move is actually far more conservative than it appears.<\/p>\n<p>One might be tempted to see Donald Trump as a menace and Jorge Ramos as a savior, but both are more than just individuals. They represent corporations that engage in the political arena as part of their strategies to capture a large audience. The presidential candidate&#8217;s\u00a0approval ratings have surged since Ramos has become a vocal opponent of the\u00a0divisive policies Trump\u00a0is advocating. Whether Trump wants to admit it or not, he will have to contend with Ramos and Univision. While the Spanish-language media and its viewers were once easy to ignore, they are increasingly changing the political conversation in the United States and taking it in a different direction.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref\" name=\"_ftn1\">[1]<\/a> http:\/\/www.cnn.com\/2015\/07\/03\/politics\/trump-san-francisco-killing\/index.html<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref\" name=\"_ftn2\">[2]<\/a> For more information on the common stereotypes of Latinos, see:<\/p>\n<p>Ram\u00edrez Berg, Charles. <em>Latino Images in Film: Stereotypes, Subversion, and Resistance<\/em>. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2002.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref\" name=\"_ftn3\">[3]<\/a> money.cnn.com\/2015\/08\/26\/media\/univision-jorge-ramos-donald-trump\/index.html<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref\" name=\"_ftn4\">[4]<\/a> http:\/\/www.huffingtonpost.com\/2014\/08\/01\/unvision-number-1-network_n_5642872.html<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"#_ftnref\" name=\"_ftn5\">[5]<\/a> http:\/\/abcnews.go.com\/Business\/abc-news-univision-announce-cable-network-called-fusion\/story?id=18468776<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This week, Medi\u00e1tico presents an interesting think piece by Christina Sisk, Associate Professor at the University of Houston and author&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":18,"featured_media":1275,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[5,88],"tags":[155,156,158,39,157],"class_list":["post-1239","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-journalism","category-latinoa","tag-donald-trump","tag-jorge-ramos","tag-latino","tag-mexico","tag-univision"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/mediatico\/files\/2016\/01\/ramos_trump2-620x412.jpg","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p49QSj-jZ","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/mediatico\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1239","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/mediatico\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/mediatico\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/mediatico\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/18"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/mediatico\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1239"}],"version-history":[{"count":20,"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/mediatico\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1239\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1307,"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/mediatico\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1239\/revisions\/1307"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/mediatico\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1275"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/mediatico\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1239"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/mediatico\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1239"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/reframe.sussex.ac.uk\/mediatico\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1239"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}