The X factor: The struggle to get Latinos in US news stories amid a Latinx push and a changing journalism landscape

During a cold January in 1954, Gus Garcia and a group of fellow Mexican American lawyers descended onto Washington, DC. They came from Texas to argue the nation’s first civil rights case involving Spanish-speaking residents and their descendants before the US Supreme Court. Their journey began in the dusty town of Edna, Texas, where cotton picker Pete Hernandez had been charged with the murder of Joe Espinoza following a dispute at a bar.

Garcia convinced Houston attorney John J. Herrera to help him with the possible test case—Enda sat in Jackson County, one of many Texas counties that barred Mexican Americans from serving on juries.

For 3 years, Garcia and Herrera spoke of the project to raise money and awareness. They gave speeches throughout the American Southwest and convinced working-class Mexican Americans to donate what little money they could to the cause of tackling Texas racial hierarchy. The lawyers went on Spanish-language radio, wrote letters to newspapers, and addressed civil rights groups on the importance of the undertaking.

When Garcia and Herrera arrived in Washington, however, a gang of reporters seeking interviews before oral arguments did not greet them. Only one—Sarah McClendon, a White, female freelance journalist and single mom who ran her own wire service—met with the Texas group on the eve before the big moment. And she would cover the arguments and report that Garcia told the highest court in the United States that Texas Revolutionary hero “Sam Houston was just a wetback from Tennessee to the real citizens of Texas, the early Mexican families whose descendants still reside there.”

She had also reported, “Latin-Americans are today denied the right to serve on juries in many Texas counties, (Garcia) said in reply to a question by Chief Justice Earl Warren.”

It was the only account by an independent journalist of the landmark case the Mexican American lawyers eventually won. For whatever reason, McClendon was the sole Washington-based reporter who felt a story involving Spanish-speaking residents of the United States had relevance.

“She used the term ‘Latin-American’ to describe us,” Mike Herrera, son of late John J. Herrera, would later say. “We didn’t care about that. We just cared she wrote about the case. Call us whatever.”

More than 60 years after the Hernandez case, mainstream media outlets have adopted many strategies to cover more accurately a population residing in the United States mainly known as “Latino” or “Hispanic.” Newspapers, websites, and broadcast station have instituted “beats” and assigned journalists to write about “urban affairs,” “minorities affairs,” immigration, education, and sometimes poverty which directly and indirectly encompassed Latinos. Since the 1980s, the same outlets also have faced pressure to hire journalists who are reflective of the communities the media outlets serve. This inevitably led to the increase in stories about “Latinos” or “Hispanics” in mainstream media.

(The encompassing terms “Latinos” and “Hispanics” generally were used to refer to Mexican Americans, Puerto Ricans, Central Americans, Cuban Americans, and immigrant populations originating from the Latin American diaspora. Mainstream media outlets regularly use the terms because they cross regional, ethnic experiences to appeal to wider audiences. “Latino” and “Hispanic” also are easier to fit in headlines: online, print publications, and on broadcast packages.)

In 1984, the Los Angeles Times won the Pulitzer Prize gold medal for meritorious public service for the series “Southern California’s Latino Community.” A team of 17 journalists crafted the series, which ran 3 weeks. The Pulitzer board said that the series “blended autobiographical accounts and other forms of personalized reporting with in-depth analysis of the problems, achievements and changing nature of the Latino community.” Winning the Pulitzer Prize, the highest honor for journalism in the United States, for a series focusing on Latinos generated excitement among Latino journalists who felt validated that their concern for more accurate coverage now would be recognized.

Still, despite the 1984 Pulitzer, notwithstanding the creation of targeted beats, and despite attempts to use inclusive language and the gains made to diversify newsrooms, studies, and surveys show, since the Hernandez case, US Latinos still do not believe that mainstream media outlets in the United States cover their communities accurately. A 2014 study by the Media Insight Project, for example, found that two-thirds of Hispanics in the United States had doubts about what mainstream media report about their communities.

The 2014 study served as a warning for American media outlets. African Americans and US Latinos make up around a third of the US population, US Census Bureau reports. The number of minorities is expected to surpass Whites by 2043. The nation’s Latino and Black communities need to be engaged as news consumers for the survival of mainstream media outlets.

In addition, media, especially newspapers, have experienced massive transformation during the last decade on the way news is consumed. The migration of news consumption to mobile and online has sparked dramatic drops in newspaper circulations, and with it, large declines in the number of reporters. The newspaper workforce shrank by around 20,000 positions, or nearly 40%, over the last two decades, a Pew Research Center’s “State of the News Media 2016” report found.

According to the 2016 American Society of News Editors Diversity Survey, Latinos make up only 5.4% of the overall newsroom workforce. Previous surveys from the same group showed that percentage has remained stagnant for the past 10 years.

Attendance at the annual convention of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists fell from 2000 attendees in 2007 to roughly 500 paid attendees by 2011. Cash-strapped news organizations rarely pay for their employees to attend minority journalists’ conventions, nor do they invest as they once did by sending recruiters to search for future employees of color amid uncertainty that the media outlet would exist within 5 years.

Some media outlets disbanded urban affairs or minority affairs beats and teams altogether to place more emphasis on multimedia, social media, or data-driven journalism—areas that media executives felt could bring in new revenue. Sometimes the beats would reappear only to disappear again during employee layoffs. The beats and coverage became inconsistent.

One beat that remained steady in most media outlets was the immigration beat. The massive migration from Mexico and Central America starting in the late 1990s transformed cities such as Atlanta, Boston, New York, and areas of the global American South where Latino immigration had once been rare. Newspaper editor and executive producers could not ignore the demographic change, so some dedicated resources to document the change, however little resources available.

The result: a significant percentage of stories about Latinos in mainstream media outlets centered on the issue of immigration. From undocumented college students known as DREAMers struggling to pay college tuition to Latino immigrants encouraged to become naturalized US citizens to vote and flex political power, journalists attempted to capture the story of Latino immigrants within the nation’s immigration narrative and the reaction of their presence.

In 2003, Sonia Nazario of the Los Angeles Times won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing for her six-part series about a Honduran teen who migrated alone from Central America in search of his mother in the United States. Times photographer Don Bartletti also was awarded the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography for capturing images of Central American teens riding alone on top of trains through dangerous jungles and gang-infested urban enclaves.

The story of Latinos in mainstream media became more firmly tied to an immigration experience regardless of the diversity of ties to the United States. The Latino experience was locked and caged into the immigrant story.

During the 2016 presidential campaign, Republican nominee Donald Trump referred to a US-born federal judge as a “Mexican” and saw a backlash, even from other Republicans. He used the word against US District Judge Gonzalo Curiel, an American of Mexican origin, and it came after Curiel agreed to unseal the details in a class-action lawsuit by people who say they were victims of fraud by Trump’s real estate business education venture.

Curiel had “an inherent conflict of interest” because Trump wanted “building a wall” along the US–Mexico border, the billionaire real estate mogul said in an interview with The Wall Street Journal. He also told a cable news outlet that Curiel is “of Mexican heritage,” dismissing the fact that Curiel was born in Indiana and saying, “He’s proud of his heritage.”

Largely overlooked was Curiel’s experience as a Mexican American who had joined a historic Black fraternity or his role in targeting Mexican drug cartels as a federal prosecutor where he was placed under federal protection for fear of assassination.

In other stories, sometimes reporters referred to Mexican Americans as “second generation Mexican immigrants,” although the subject of the story was born and raised in an American city. The immigrant narrative persisted.

As a reporter with The Associated Press (AP), I mentioned attorney John J. Herrera in a 2012 story about John F. Kennedy’s 1963 historic visit with Latino civil rights leaders the night before the president’s assassination. Herrera had journeyed with Gus Garcia to Washington for the Hernandez case with the goal of convincing the US Supreme Court that Mexican Americans deserved the full privilege of US citizenship, and they were a “class apart” from other groups racialized as White because of the discrimination they faced.

Days after the national story hit the wire, I received an email from a curious reader. The man enjoyed my story and wanted to know where he might find more information about the “immigrant hero lawyers” Herrera and Garcia. I thanked the reader for his email and informed him that Herrera was born in Louisiana and was a descendant of a Tejano who fought with Texas Revolutionaries against Mexico. Gus Garcia, who served in War World II as a first lieutenant in the US Army, was born in Laredo, Texas.

Not long after that encounter, I found my same story on the website of a notable conservative talk show host. “John F. Kennedy used for immigration,” the title of the blog post read. But the story was about how Mexican Americans persuaded Kennedy to stop by a gala for civil rights leaders after Viva Kennedy clubs in Texas helped his presidential campaign in 1960. Immigration was not a factor.

More than a half-century after Garcia and Herrera went to the US Supreme Court to argue their landmark case, the Mexican American lawyers were now immigrants.

The entrance of term Latinx comes during this transformation of media’s business model and pressures to accurately cover communities where Latinos reside. It also comes amid pressure by media of color advocacy groups to hire and promote journalists of color across the American newsroom and the experience of Latinos being locked in an immigrant experience narrative. And yet, there is renewed pressure to take into account working-class Whites in America’s Rust Belt, Appalachia, and the old South after the election of Donald Trump.

The totality of those realities requires mainstream newsgathering outlets in the United States to use the most accessible language on air, in print, and online. Those that are consistent, but evolving, seek to maintain a reputation of objectivity in an increasingly polarized and partisan news landscape.

Among the tools governing the language are media stylebooks, most notably, The Associated Press Stylebook. There are many media stylebooks, but the one issued by The AP carries considerable weight because of the news organization’s history.

The AP is a nonprofit news cooperative that began in 1846 when a group of New York newspapers bankrolled a pony express from Alabama to spread news of the US–Mexican War. It remains one of the world’s largest newsgathering organizations.

The first AP Stylebook was not produced until 1953 and had only 63 pages. It also came when newsrooms were almost solely staffed by White males and before the start of the Black Civil Rights Movement and other movements involving people of color in the United States.

Still, The AP Stylebook helped standardize language in media, from titles of federal judges to when and where acronyms should be used to identify government agencies. It also worked to govern changes in American English and offered suggestion on how reporters should refer to ethnic minority groups in copy without being offensive. The entries changed over time as the sensibilities in the nation and world transformed.

According to the 2017 AP Stylebook, the entry for the word “Latino” remains unchanged from recent years. The entry says,

Latino—Often the preferred term for a person from—or whose ancestors were from—a Spanish-speaking land or culture or from Latin America. Latina is the feminine form. Follow the person’s preference. Use a more specific identification when possible, such as Cuban, Puerto Rican, Brazilian or Mexican-American. See Hispanic, nationalities and races, and race.

There also is an entry for Hispanic:

Hispanic—A person from—or whose ancestors were from—a Spanish-speaking land or culture. Latino and Latina are sometimes preferred. Follow the person’s preference. Use a more specific identification when possible, such as Cuban, Puerto Rican or Mexican-American. See Latino, nationalities and races and race.

And there is an entry for the word Chicano:

Chicano—Sometimes used by Mexican-Americans in the Southwest. Not interchangeable with Mexican-American. Use only if a person’s preference.

The entry for Chicano was a change from the early 2000s when The AP Stylebook advised journalists to “avoid” the word Chicano. This suggestion was dropped after getting feedback from AP journalists and journalists from other news agencies. As of 2017, there is no entry for Latinx.

The absence of Latinx (pronounced LAH’-teen-ex) can be attributed to many factors. The word began appearing more regularly in blogs and in press releases from advocacy groups in 2016. Advocates said the term had been around for some years. Curious reporters inquired about the new term and were told it was a gender-neutral alternative to Latino and Latina. The term was an attempt to incorporate individuals who did not identify with a gender or who were transgender. Yet, the term did not reach the radar of editors of stylebooks monitoring changes in the English language.

Had the term caught the attention of editors, it might have been dismissed, at least at this stage of the term’s history. After all, the same editors had heard requests in recent years to replace Latino with “Latina/o” in stylebooks. There also had been a small, but vocal, group advocating for the use of “Latin@” as the term of choice. None have been adopted. Mainstream media might view Latinx, for now, as another trendy, academic term not widely used outside of academia and the lexicon of left-leaning advocacy groups.

That is not to say some media outlets have not adopted the term Latinx. In July 2016, the Huffington Post’s Latino Voices—a vertical within the online outlet that covers Latino issues—announced that it has been incorporating the usage of Latinx into some articles to reflect the change that some people identified with the term.

“Used by scholars, activists, and an increasing number of journalists, Latinx is quickly gaining popularity among the general public,” Tanisha Love Ramirez and Zeba Blay wrote for HuffPost Latino Voices. “It’s part of a ‘linguistic revolution’ that aims to move beyond gender binaries and is inclusive of the intersecting identities of Latin American descendants.”

Throughout the presidential election, news websites and blogs who choose not to be governed by mainstream media stylebooks also opted to use Latinx sporadically in copy. Occasionally, a cable news outlet would identify an activist as working for a “Latinx group,” but in general the term largely was absent from the New York Times, The AP, USA Today, and major broadcast networks. The term did not catch in mainstream media, and media gatekeepers did not want to devote network time or print space to explaining Latinx to a confused audience. Latinx remains a marginal term among other options.

That is not to say that Latinx may enter as an optional use for mainstream media after wide usage and pressure from advocacy groups. For years, stylebooks said the term “illegal immigrant” was acceptable despite complaints from left-leaning immigrant advocacy groups that it was offensive and should be replaced.

In 2013, The AP announced The AP Stylebook would no longer sanction the term “illegal immigrant” or the use of “illegal” to describe a person. Instead, the stylebook told users “illegal” should describe only an action, such as living in or immigrating to a country illegally.

“We concluded that to be consistent, we needed to change our guidance,” then Senior Vice President and Executive Editor Kathleen Carroll wrote in a blog post:

Change is a part of AP Style because the English language is constantly evolving, enriched by new words, phrases and uses. Our goal always is to use the most precise and accurate words so that the meaning is clear to any reader anywhere.

Except in direct quotations, do not use the terms illegal alien, an illegal, illegals, or undocumented, Carroll wrote. Do not describe people as violating immigration laws without attribution.

People who were brought into the country as children should not be described as having immigrated illegally, the blog post continued. “For people granted a temporary right to remain in the US under the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, use temporary resident status, with details on the program lower in the story.”

And recently, news organizations have faced scrutiny over gender-specific pronouns and how journalists should describe transgender subjects. NLGJA: The Association of LGBTQ Journalists worked to give media outlets feedback and even distribute freely “a Spanish-language stylebook for journalists reporting on lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer people.”

Yet, movement on how journalists should describe transgender subjects evolved.

In March 2017, The AP announced that the 2017 AP Stylebook would include around 200 new and modified entries. Among the new entries were revised descriptions for “they, them, their,” the news cooperative said. The change came after debates over changing language to describe people who identify as transgender and gender–nonbinary.

“In most cases, a plural pronoun should agree in number with the antecedent: The children love the books their uncle gave them. They/them/their is acceptable in limited cases as a singular and-or gender-neutral pronoun, when alternative wording is overly awkward or clumsy,” the new entry said. “However, rewording usually is possible and always is preferable. Clarity is a top priority; gender-neutral use of a singular they is unfamiliar to many readers. We do not use other gender-neutral pronouns such as xe or ze ….”

Arguments for using they/them as a singular sometimes arise with an indefinite pronoun (anyone, everyone, and someone) or unspecified/unknown gender (a person, the victim, and the winner), The AP said. The entry continued:

In stories about people who identify as neither male nor female or ask not to be referred to as he/she/him/her: Use the person’s name in place of a pronoun, or otherwise reword the sentence, whenever possible. If they/them/their use is essential, explain in the text that the person prefers a gender-neutral pronoun. Be sure that the phrasing does not imply more than one person. Examples of rewording:

Hendricks said the new job is a thrill (instead of Hendricks said Hendricks is thrilled about the new job or Hendricks said they are thrilled about the new job).

In addition, the 2017 AP Stylebook sanctioned the use of “LGBT” and “LGBTQ” as “acceptable in all references for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender, or lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and questioning and/or queer.”

The new entry said other forms such as LGBTQIA and other variations are also acceptable with the other letters in the acronym explained. “I generally stands for intersex, and A can stand for allies (a person who is not LGBT but who actively supports the LGBT community), asexual (a person who doesn’t experience sexual attraction) or both,” according to the entry.

The word queer could be considered a slur in many contexts, so the stylebook advised to limit use of the word to quotes and names of organizations, “following rules for obscenities, profanities, vulgarities as appropriate.”

Similar changes and debates are occurring around other media stylebooks. But while gender-neutral terms are evolving, Latinx remains excluded from conversations. How long will this continue? And if Latinx becomes more widely used, will it convince stylebook editors to include it among the other options to describe Latinos as mentioned above? Or will it continue to be seen as one of many “trendy” terms coming out of the academy and from advocacy groups?

I am a reporter for The AP based in Albuquerque, New Mexico. This state in the American Southwest has the largest percentage of Latino residents in the country (43%) and is among the nation’s poorest. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, 72% of all children born in New Mexico in 2015 were born into families on Medicaid—the federal and state program aimed at providing health care for families with limited resources.

Close to 30% of children in New Mexico live below the federal poverty line, as do 20% of all families. Both statistics rank New Mexico 50th, respectively, compared to other states and the District of Columbia.

From the Navajo Nation on the west side of the state to colonias along the US–Mexico border, some communities lack basic plumbing and residents must navigate on desert and dirt roads that become impassable during monsoon season. In city of Española in northern New Mexico, police and nearby tribal authorities carry the drug Narcan to revive residents facing death from heroin overdose. The region has long being among the nation’s leaders in fatal opioid overdose and battled the epidemic long before national political leaders pointed to the more recent opioid crisis in Ohio and West Virginia. Opioid addiction for some in Española goes back three generations.

Every day, I leave a suburban existence in Rio Rancho, New Mexico, to drive to The AP Bureau in northern Albuquerque. And every day, I must pass through the American Indian communities of the Santa Ana and Sandia Pueblos and the town of Bernalillo to get to work. All three are among the nation’s poorest communities.

It is a state obsessed with this US Hispanic past but until recently did not have a school named after Albuquerque-born George I. Sanchez—the pioneering Latino scholar and activist who helped give birth to modern-day ethnic studies. When I wrote a story about Sanchez, I received a number of inquiries on why I called him a “Latino” scholar. After all, he was born in Albuquerque in 1906 and should be considered “Hispano,” readers said. That is the popular term used in New Mexico to describe Spanish-speaking descendants who claim a family lineage to the territory from the era when Spanish explorers settled the land. (Hispano is not a term mentioned in any mainstream media stylebook, including The AP Stylebook.)

New Mexico has not had a Latino in the US Senate since 1976. At the time of writing this piece, both the New Mexico Speaker of the House and the Senate Majority Leader are White male Democrats. Latinos are represented through its state government but are not in key positions of power except for the governor’s office.

Immigrants suspected of living in the country illegally make up only around 5% of the population in New Mexico. This population largely opts for higher paying jobs in Texas, Arizona, and Colorado despite the immigrant-friendly policies of the nation’s most Hispanic state.

This is the reality from where I must work as a journalist in New Mexico. I am met with a challenge to come up with story ideas around these cultural, political, and economic dynamics of the state. Like AP reporters in other states, I must convince my editors that my story ideas are relevant, and the stories also would be read by audiences outside of New Mexico, as far away as Germany or Japan. Less of concern for me is which term I should use to describe the subjects of my story. My concern is the story.

If one should involve a Latino transgender resident, for now, it is important for me to use the terms “Latino transgender male” and “Latina transgender female” to be as descriptive as possible. I ask the subject which pronoun the subject prefers. My energies are devoted to convincing readers why they should care about the Latino transgender subject. Is this person struggling with a heroin addiction? Is this subject about to make history by winning a key public office? Is this person the leader of a new startup or the target of a federal investigation? Is the person the head of a nonprofit aimed at protecting transgender or LGBTQ refugees?

“Modern writing at its worst does not consist in picking out words for the sake of their meaning and inventing images in order to make the meaning clearer,” George Orwell wrote in his essay, “Politics and the English Language.”

Neutralizing gender for the sake of inclusion could result in ignoring the oppression around gender identity and sexuality. And when it occurs, it is the duty of the journalist to document it and convey it in the most simple terms the how, what, when, and why. Latinx neutralizes gender for the reporter when the subject’s gender could be important to the story. Whether one is Latino male or Latina female in New Mexico determines how low one might find oneself below the federal poverty line. A gender–nonbinary person from a Spanish-speaking past might even be lower, and that person’s struggles are why audiences might read a story.

Latinx also could be used to cover up a painful past. Take the Mexican American lawyers Gus Garcia and John J. Herrera as examples. The two civil rights leaders dedicated themselves to fighting discrimination against Latinos in1950s Jim Crow Texas. They risked their lives for the cause and endured political and financial hardships for their choices.

The men also were products of 1950s visions of masculinity as demonstrated famously in the AMC-TV series “Mad Men.” The pair wore fedoras and tailored three-piece suits and drove new American cars when they were able to afford them. They drank heavily, womanized, and belonged to chapters of Latino civil rights organizations that barred women from being active participants. Both are expected to be subjects for upcoming books and at least one possible feature film.

To call either Garcia or Herrera “Latinx civil rights lawyers” is problematic. It takes away attention from the lawyers’ misogyny and views on masculinity. Furthermore, it masks their behavior and diverts attention away from deconstructing their various contradictions.

Latinx applied to these attorneys also overlooks the lawyers’ views on pre-Stonewall homosexuality and gender identity. While it can be assumed that the men held popular homophobic views toward gays and lesbians at the time, neither left clues in their writings and interviews on their beliefs. Or is there something the men scholars have overlooked? Did they have any same-sex relationships?

Sounds like a job for a journalists or historian. No term could uncover that story.