By Raul Hernandez
As a Hispanic reporter for three decades at four newsrooms, what Mayor Lightfoot is proposing is nonsense, counterproductive.
Hold those at the newsroom management responsible for not hiring minorities and ask why minorities aren’t assigned to City Hall?
First, find out if this has been practice and pattern throughout the years at certain media outlets. Then, hold a press conference and name the media culprits.
There is some case law against doing what the mayor wants to do: Times-Picayune (1988) and Southwestern Newspaper V. Curtis (1979) Also Borrecca v. Fasi (1974.)
But doing what the mayor wants to do is a waste of taxpayers’ money. She needs to check with the City Attorney’s Office before she implements this unfair and probably, illegal policy.
Ms. Mayor, this was the state of journalism when I was barely getting into the profession in the 1980s.
The “Taco Beat” and “Anglo Helpers”
BY RAUL HERNANDEZ
(Republished American Justice Notebook Column from April 15, 2015)
“You ever heard of the Taco Beat?”
I asked a young Hispanic newspaper reporter attending the National Association of Hispanic Journalists in Anaheim in 2013. He looked at me like a dog staring at a TV set before shaking his head.
We were talking about how journalism was changing, but for him, not fast enough. So I told him about the “Taco Beat.”
More than two decades ago, many Hispanic newspaper reporters claimed minorities were hired only to add a little color to the newsroom, and most of us were relegated to the “Taco Beat,” as we liked to say back then.
CLICK BELOW TO READ THE ENTIRE COLUMN: https://cjnotebook.com/the-taco-beat-the-fbi-and-ferguson/
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The First Amendment and Thomas Jefferson
“The only security of all is in a free press. The force of public opinion cannot be resisted when permitted freely to be expressed. The agitation it produces must be submitted to. It is necessary, to keep the waters pure.” –Thomas Jefferson to Lafayette, 1823.