Juan González is a staff columnist for New York’s Daily News, a two-time winner of the George Polk Award for commentary, co-host of Democracy Now!, and former president of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists, where he was inducted into its Hall of Fame. With Joseph Torres, he is the co-author of News for All the People: The Epic Story of Race and the American Media, recently released by Verso. Ernest R. Sotomayor recently talked with González about some of the issues explored in the book. (Disclosure: Sotomayor was consulted by González for feedback on the book as it was written.) This transcript has been edited for clarity.
Give us a lesson on what really happened when it came to people of color in this country, and their place in developing news media.
People of color were involved almost from the very beginning of the country in terms of developing their independent voices. They were able to do that for two reasons. One, they were excluded from the existing news media systems of their day because no African Americans or Latinos or Native Americans were involved in the early newspapers. And, two, there was government policy that allowed them to do that, and it was called postal policy.
You had over thirty African American newspapers before the Civil War, you had close to a hundred Spanish language newspapers before the Civil War, and twenty five in the city of New Orleans alone, you had a half dozen Native American newspapers and several Chinese newspapers, all developed before the Civil War because there was a government policy that if you could print a paper, the government would deliver it.
The main job of the postal system for more than a hundred years was delivery of newspapers, not letters. And this was the result of policy decisions made by the founders of the nation that dissemination of news and information was vital to the preservation of the republic. This was an information policy decision and a communications policy decision that allowed the United States to have more newspapers per capita than any other nation in the world.
Your journalism career has intertwined with a lot of activism in social issues, and always with the stated goal of promoting democracy. How did that affect you as you did this book?
My main concern was my frustration with the inability of those of us who are journalists to do our job well. And with all the pressures that the industry is under, and all of the other problems it has encountered in recent years, it was increasingly clear that it was becoming difficult for journalists to do their job, but I did not understand precisely why—not only just in terms of providing the kind of information that the American people need, but also in dealing with this intractable problem of racism, of coverage that was not racially inclusive, and that of the lack of diversity in the newsrooms. So what I was trying to do was get a sense of how our system of news got to where it is today. That’s what caused me to embark on this journey, to go back to the earliest period of journalism and take it to the present, to try to understand—independent of individuals, independent of companies, independent of enlightened strategies—why our system has been so resistant to change.
Do you feel, after examining what has happened in the last 300 years, that there is really a future ahead where the “system” is going to be far more accommodating, especially as we go into the Internet age?
Nothing like a lecture on race from a notable media race pimp.
#1 Posted by Mike H, CJR on Tue 29 Nov 2011 at 02:20 PM
You might want to mention Gonzales's co-hosting duties on democracy now as part of your cv summary:
http://www.democracynow.org/
For quite a few years, it was THE program where you could get dissent outside the corporate, pro-conservative, worldview. And it basically pioneered the public interest, global/universal access, internet delivery of information we take for granted today. Back in 1996, they were doing high quality webcasts over real player. Near 20 years of experimental media delivery? It might be fun to ask about that.
#2 Posted by Thimbles, CJR on Tue 29 Nov 2011 at 03:05 PM
Mike H -- your comment is both idiotic and repugnant -- two primary characteristics of the right-wing mind -- and yet another instance of the repellent conservative tendency to impute racism to anti-racists.
Thimbles -- the intro to the interview notes that Gonzalez is the co-host of Democracy Now! I agree, though, that the interview itself should have explored Gonzalez's involvement with the program.
#3 Posted by George de Stefano, CJR on Wed 7 Dec 2011 at 05:09 PM
No question, Mike H., purely by that statement alone, is undeniably the biggest race pimp on this page, pushing know-nothing kneejerk Foxism. Meanwhile, JG deserved the Pulitzer the Daily News editorial board got on behalf of his courageous coverage of the toxic stew at Ground Zero no other NY journalist covered as thoroughly. There's also the CityTime scandal he well and truly owned as a story from the ground up, all by means of tenacious reporting week after week, something one prays will not be lost as journalism becomes increasingly digital.
Viva Juan!
#4 Posted by JK, CJR on Tue 24 Jan 2012 at 10:14 AM