Obama Meets With Latino Reporters

The nine Spanish-language reporters who met with President Obama at the White House asked questions of concern to a variety of Hispanic constituencies. (Credit: Pete Souza/ White House)

WASHINGTON - President Obama, continuing his outreach to core Democratic constituencies. met with Latino journalists at the White House and held a conference call with reporters for African American newspapers.

"During the half-hour conversation on Monday, there was concern that the programs in place aren't reaching the workers who need them most," Mary C. Curtis wrote in Politics Daily of the black-press conference call. "Though the majority of African-American voters don't seem to buy the GOP message, it's not certain that Democrats and the president have closed the deal."

The meeting with Latino journalists, held in the Roosevelt Room, touched on a variety of topics raised by journalists largely from Spanish-language media. Present were Hernando Amaya of El Tiempo in Las Vegas; Victor Perez of Hoy; Jordi Zamora of Agence France-Presse; Antonieta Cadiz of La Opinion/ImpreMedia; Isabel Morales of El Nuevo Herald in Miami; Luis Alonso of the Associated Press;Ruben Barrera of Notimex, the semi-official Mexican news agency, Macarena Vidal of EFE, the leading Spanish language news agency; and Jose Delgado of El Nuevo Día in Puerto Rico.

They took away news geared toward their particular constituencies. The Miami Herald, sister paper of El Nuevo Herald, noted that Obama said Cuba must act more swiftly in releasing political prisoners.

The Las Vegas Review-Journal, published in a state where Senate Majority Leader Harry A. Reid, D-Nev., is in a close race with Republican Sharron Angle, quoted Obama on a controversial advertisement in Nevada that urges Latinos not to vote this year.

"Obama said Latinos who withhold their vote in Nevada would hurt Reid and 'reward' Angle, who he said 'would never vote for immigration reform,' " the Review-Journal reported, noting the presence of Amaya in the White House meeting.

Luis Alonso told Journal-isms he wrote six stories for the AP's Spanish service. Each was on a different topic.

More is coming. Univision announced that Eddie “Píolin” Sotelo, three-time winner of the Marconi Radio Award, plans to interview Obama live and in-studio on Monday at 9 a.m. Pacific Time on Univision Radio’s “Piolin for la Mañana.”

Assessing this increased activity, Laura Wides-Munoz of the Associated Press reported, "Spanish-language networks and publications are taking on a more prominent role this election season, nabbing debates with major candidates and increasingly seeing their political coverage spin out into mainstream English-language media.

"The attention highlights not only the growing influence of Hispanics, the nation's largest and fastest-growing minority group, but also the power of the companies that provide much of their news.

As an example, Wides-Munoz wrote, "Take recent comments by U.S. Rep. Loretta Sanchez, D-Calif., during a Sunday morning talk show with Spanish-language Univision Network anchor Jorge Ramos.

"Sanchez told viewers her Republican opponent Van Tran, who fled Vietnam as a child, was anti-immigrant and anti-Hispanic. In previous years, those words might have gone unnoticed outside the Spanish-speaking community.

"This year they were picked up by a blogger, replayed on YouTube and seized upon by Republican Party leaders, demonstrating not just the increased influence of Spanish-language media but also how ever-more-powerful social media has made the information it provides easier to disseminate."

Luis Miranda, White House liaison for Hispanic media, told Journal-isms that "our outreach to Hispanic media has been unprecedented, not recently, but from day one" of the Obama administration.

Meanwhile, Darlene Superville the Associated Press, reported on Obama's planned outreach to other groups: "He'll reach out to women Thursday in Seattle, discussing women and the economy with a female-only audience.

"And next week, Obama will court younger voters and those who don't rely on traditional media for their news when he takes his campaign message to Comedy Central's 'The Daily Show' with Jon Stewart."

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