In one of the cover stories for Time magazine’s 100 most influential people, liberal CNN correspondent Christiane Amanpour wrote about Fusion and Univision host Jorge Ramos by describing him as someone “with a heart of gold” and voice that he’s not afraid to use.
Amanpour’s 170-word post led off with this short description of Ramos that few (if any) in the media would use to describe any conservative commentator: “Jorge Ramos is silver-haired and gray-eyed, but inside that ring of steel beats a heart of gold.”
Embracing his advocacy for his definition of immigration reform, Amanpour praised his interview style:
Ramos wrangles with President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner; he swims the Rio Grande; he says he asks every question as if it’s his last, determined to get an answer or go down trying. What happened to immigration reform? He knows he has a voice and is not afraid to use it. He shouts from every rooftop that Hispanic rights are human rights.
Staying on the issue of immigration, Amanpour wrote that the bilingual news anchor “is waging the campaign of a lifetime, which is also a defining issue for America, the country he calls home” (after growing up in Mexico).
Amanpour concluded by sizing up the role of the Hispanics in America and the upcoming presidential election:
To Democrats and Republicans he says Hispanics are “truly tired” of what he has dubbed their “Christopher Columbus syndrome.” “They discover us during the presidential campaigns and then they forget about us,” he says.
With another presidential election coming up, if anyone can move this needle, Jorge Ramos can—and he must.
The selection of Amanpour to write about Ramos comes months after she presented him with an award at the Committee to Protect Journalists’ International Press Freedom Awards on November 26. At the event, Amanpour hailed Ramos as “one of the toughest television news interviewers around” and having “a fearsome reputation for pushing politicians on immigration and other issues where he sees shortcomings.”
In his acceptance speech, Ramos argued the need for more advocacy journalism by referencing a quote by well-known Holocaust survivor Ellie Wiesel where he said that: “We must take sides. Neutrality helps the oppressor, never the victim.”
When it comes to Ramos being fierce, it’s almost always at the hands of conservatives or hitting Democrats from the left. For a sampling of his attacks on Republicans, I’d highly recommend the work done by MRC and MRC Latino (which can be found here).
