The Media Research Center has long hated Univision host Jorge Ramos:
- It tried to get him fired for being critical of Donald Trump.
- It accused him of divisive “nationalism” when he pointed out that Hispanic people have rights.
- It was angry when he won a journalism award.
- It bizarrely insisted he was the Hispanic equivalent of a white supremacist for pointing out that Hispanics lack governmental representation proportionate to their population.
- It attacked him for moderating a 2019 debate of Democratic presidential candidates. It also did a work-the-refs post attacking Ramos before another debate (which he ultimately didn’t take part in due to COVID exposure).
- It cheered that a Trump adviser in 2020 “finally took Univision anchor Jorge Ramos to task for his incessant haranguing of Hispanic conservatives who don’t toe the Univision line and vote for reasons other than immigration.”
Jorge Bonilla has been the MRC’s designated Ramos-hater for years — indeed, the now-dormant MRC Latino operation seems to have been created solely to attack Ramos — and he has had even more Ramos meltdowns over the past few years:
- Amid Univision Layoffs, Jorge Ramos Slanders ‘Reopen’ Movement
- DISINFORMATION: Jorge Ramos Spins Biden Stance on Abortion
- Jorge Ramos Propagandizes: ‘Biden Is CONCERNED’ About Migrant Situation, Kids In Cages
- Jorge Ramos Ditches Surfside Ruins for One Last Shot at Trump
- Jorge Ramos: Vaccine Skeptics Are a Danger to Democracy
- Why Did Jorge Ramos Not Ask ‘Karla Marx’ About Perv Teacher Friend?
- Jorge Ramos Argues Ye Olde ‘Spanish-Language Disinformation’, Spreads Disinformation
- Jorge Ramos Column Calls Trump Indictment ‘A Beautiful Act’
- Jorge Ramos: Biden Must Allow An Extra 3 Million Immigrants a Year Into The U.S.
- Univision’s Jorge Ramos Gets SHUT DOWN On Immigration, Border Crisis
- ‘THANKS, BUT’: Jorge Ramos WHINES About Insufficiency of Biden’s Latest Amnesty
In an apparent indication he was running out of material, Bonilla wrote three recycled “flashback” posts about Ramos in 2024:
- FLASHBACK: Jorge Ramos Said Trump Indictment Was a ‘Beautiful Act’
- FLASHBACK: Jorge Ramos Liked The Idea Of An AOC ‘24 Run for President
- FLASHBACK: Jorge Ramos ‘Produced’ 2015 Iowa Heckling of Donald Trump
Then there was a development that filled Bonilla with glee: Ramos announced he was leaving Univision. Bonilla was in full Wizard of Oz mode in a Sept. 10 post (also in Spanish):
Multiple corners of the internet were roiled by the news that Univision and senior anchor Jorge Ramos agreed to part ways at the end of the year. While this is a welcome development, I would urge caution against labeling this move as indicative of any sort of ideological shift at the network.
[…]To be crystal clear, an announced mutual decision to non-renew is the most elegant of firings. If I walk into a car dealership, offer $30K for the model on sale for $40K and get laughed out of the showroom, then we mutually agreed not to come together on a deal for a car. In this case, “mutual agreement” is a red flag indicating that Ramos refused to accept whatever the network was offering him in order to extend.
Per sources with knowledge of the situation, Ramos was offered a contract extension in exchange for significantly reduced compensation (from a figure reportedly somewhere between Muir and Holt money), and a significantly reduced role wherein he would no longer be the face of the news division. Being forced off the anchor desk and relegated to a weekly role was apparently a step too far for Ramos.
It is clear that TelevisaUnivision wants to take its U.S.-based news division in a different direction. I would caution against anyone inferring that the firing of Ramos represents a shift to the right. It does not.
Televisa’s rumored replacement of Ramos with Enrique Acevedo does NOT represent a shift to the right, no matter how much the Professional Latinx may squeal to that effect, but a shift away from open activism and towards the appearance of something representing “mainstream” media.
We thought the MRC hated anonymous sources — which is what Bonilla’s “sources with knowledge of the situation” are. Should Bonilla get a talking-to from Tim Graham about that? Still, his whining continued:
For the last decade, we’ve described Univision as an activist organization with a broadcast license and regurgitator of Democrat [sic] talking points. These assessments were driven, primarily, by the performance of Jorge Ramos as lead anchor and public face of the news division. For over a decade, MRC Latino has made crystal clear that there could be no true reform at Univision so long as Ramos remained in place. Now that he’s on his way out, we’ll see just how serious the reformers are.
In the coming days and weeks, we’ll complete our assessment of the damage that Ramos’ brand of journalism has done to our political discourse, and catalogue some of his worst demagoguery. For now, we welcome these developments but remain focused on fighting Spanish-language disinformation at its biggest source: corporate Spanish-language news media.
We don’t recall anyone at the MRC describing Fox News as “an activist organization with a broadcast license and regurgitator of Republican talking points.”
In a Nov. 25 post, Bonilla cheered that Ramos “may have confirmed the fate of his show- which was rumored to fall to the cost-cutting axe.”
When Ramos finally did sign off, Bonilla sneered in a Dec. 15 post under the headline “GOOD RIDDANCE”:
Today, upon signing off of his eponymous weekly public affairs show, Univision anchor Jorge Ramos officially departed the broadcast airwaves. At least for now. And our political discourse, particularly within the Hispanic community, is vastly better off for it.
[…]Jorge Ramos wasn’t just the face of Univision, but was also the face of Spanish-language news media in the United States. On the one hand, he embodied the American Dream: arriving to the United States as a penniless young man who chased his dreams and achieved the apex of his profession. On the other, the policy positions (and, by extension, candidates) he advocated for represented the foreclosure of the American Dream to everyone else coming in behind him.
Ramos devoted his powerful voice and platform to the advocacy for unrestricted open borders at the expense of everything else, and platformed open-border candidates above all else. Ramos lent his credibility to the idea of Hispanics being a monolith voting bloc and immigration being the community’s apex issue- an illusion that was shattered when Donald Trump descended the gilded escalator at his eponymous Tower.
Rather than considering voices who strayed from orthodoxy, he labelled those who disagreed with his stances as race-traitors. He infamously penned a column cheering the 2016 primary defeat of Senators Ted Cruz and Marco Rubio because of their positions on immigration.
But Ramos’s rigid orthodoxies blinded him to the change that was happening within the Hispanic community: Hispanics, in ever increasing numbers, rejected his racialist appeals and voted for Donald Trump.
Ramos, who believed the gushing coverage accorded to him by the Resistance Media, failed to course correct or adjust for these changes. His toxic race essentialiist discourse never considered that Hispanics might WANT to be part of the nation we live in, rather than a permanent alien class forever separate from the American mainstream. 2024 left him on the outside looking in, and now he’s out. He won’t be missed.
Bonilla seems to have forgotten that his onetime MRC Latino colleague smeared him as the equivalent of a white supremacist for wanting Hispanics to have their fair share of political power. Not sure what’s “toxic” about expecting a fully representative government.