The new America has been born. More than half of all newborns in California are Latino and the rest of the country will follow. In less that 50 years, Hispanics, Asians and African-Americans will become the majority of the population. And in 120 years from now there will be more Latinos than non-Hispanic whites. We are in the midst of a truly demographic revolution that will have an even bigger impact than the current war against terrorism. Nothing will change America more in this century than the growth and influence of the Hispanic population.

           What is now an exception –two Hispanic senators (Mel Martinez and Ken Salazar) or the first Latino Attorney General (Al Gonzalez)- will become the norm. And even though president George W. Bush missed a historic opportunity to nominate the first Latino to the Supreme Court, I am convinced that the first Hispanic U.S. president has been born. However, there is a long road ahead. 

            Latinos are underrepresented in politics and in the media. With 50 million Hispanics  –including the undocumented immigrants-  we are about 15 percent of the population. Nevertheless, there is only one Latino governor –Bill Richardson Lopez in New Mexico- and a mere 22 members of Congress of Hispanic origin (in comparison to 38 from the African-American community). In the news media things are not much    different.

            The number of Hispanic national correspondents in ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN and Fox News is symbolic at best and the presence of Latinos and Hispanic issues in prime time programming is barely noticeable. In other words, television is not representing appropriately the country and the world we live in. Let me give you an example.

            If a viewer in the U.S. wants to know what is going on in Mexico, Venezuela, Cuba or Colombia, he or she would be hard pressed to find anything relevant in the network news in English. Latin America is routinely ignored. One of the most underrreported stories is how Latin America is turning politically to the left –Chavez, Kirchner, Lula, López Obrador, Evo Morales…- while the United States turns to the right and forgets about the rest of the hemisphere.
But there is more. When the networks recently reported about the victims of an earthquake in Pakistan, most forgot to report that at the same time thousands were dying in Central America and southern Mexico because of the floods. And reporting about Hispanic or immigrant issues in the United States is not much better.

            When was the last time that you heard an undocumented immigrant in a network news program? Even though they might need a translator, they are easy to find. After all, there are 11 million undocumented immigrants in this nation and it is difficult to think of a more relevant issue than that of a comprehensive immigration reform. When was the last time you listened to a debate about the high drop out rate among Hispanic students?

Things have not changed dramatically in the news media in the last decade. A report conducted in 1994 by America Rodriguez, a social scientist from the University of Texas, found that “just over 1 percent of ABC’s World News Tonight (6 out of 466) were U.S. Latinos…while just under 2 percent of (ABC’s newscast) is taken up with news of Latin America.” It is not a matter of having a “news quota” about Latino issues. But when your audience is increasingly composed by Hispanic viewers, it simply makes business and news sense to include stories about them and their countries of origin.
While the network newscasts are continuously loosing a share of the market, Spanish-language programming is growing. Why? In part it has to do with the fact that the United States (because of immigration and a high birth rate among Latinos) is already the largest Spanish speaking country in the world (with the exception of Mexico). But also,  it is clear that Spanish-language newscasts are providing their bilingual viewers with something they cannot find in English programming, namely news about Latinos and Latin America. It is no wonder that some of the most watched news programs in cities like Miami, Los Angeles, Houston, Chicago and New York are in Spanish. And this trend will not subside in the near future.

Those companies in the industry that just don’t get it and don’t make the appropriate changes will simply not survive. Diversity (in news, in content, in employment) is not only the right thing to do, but has become a prerequisite if you want to remain competitive in a multicultural, multiethnic, multilingual society.

This is our new reality T.V.* Jorge Ramos is the eight-time Emmy-winner senior anchorman of Univision News. He has written seven books and his latest, Dying to Cross, was published by Rayo-HarperCollins.