Jorge Gilberto Ramos Avalos was born in Mexico City on March 16, 1958. He is the eldest of five siblings. In 1981 he graduated with a degree in Social Communication from the Universidad Iberoamericana, and later he studied television and journalism at the University of California, Los Angeles, and also attained a master’s degree in international relations, which he completed at the University of Miami.
In his early career as a journalist, he worked in Mexican radio, as an editor for the news program Antena Cinco, and later as an investigative reporter for 60 Minutos, both on the Televisa network. However, his foray into Mexican television was brief. After a censorship incident, he decided to move to the United States and arrived in Los Angeles in January 1983. There he began his American adventure.
Jorge Ramos is a clear example of what it means to come to the United States as an immigrant. He worked for two years as a waiter before receiving the opportunity to become the main TV anchor of Univision. Since November 3, 1986, he has been the lead anchor of Noticiero Univision in the United States, the newscast with the greatest impact on the U.S. Hispanic community. Since then, his career has grown, leading him to cover five major wars: the civil war in El Salvador, the war in Kosovo, the Gulf War, the war in Iraq and the war in Afghanistan.
He has also covered the end of apartheid in South Africa, the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Ibero-American summits, guerrilla movements in Chiapas and Central America, elections in most of the continent and natural disasters, including Hurricane Katrina.
Thanks to his journalistic work, he has won 12 awards and the recognition of the publications across the United States, such as Newsweek magazine, which ranked him among the 50 most important journalists in this country. Time magazine recognized him in 2015 as one of the 100 most influential people in the world alongside figures such as Barack Obama, Angela Merkel and Vladimir Putin. He is also considered one of the 25 most influential Hispanics in North America. People en Español magazine placed him in its list of the 100 most influential Latinos in North America.
Few people in the world have the opportunity to interview the world’s best and brightest, but Jorge Ramos is one of them. His long list of interviewees includes important politicians, army service members, sportsmen, cultural figures, and great artists. Among the personalities who have been interviewed by Ramos are Enrique Peña Nieto, Barack Obama, Hugo Chávez, Álvaro Uribe Vélez, Donald Trump and Nicolás Maduro. These public figures symbolized special moments in the journalist’s career, as they have been controversial and encapsulated a specific moment in time—these interviews have earned him the respect of thousands of viewers throughout the American continent.
In addition to his participation in Noticiero Univision, which airs in the United States and 13 Latin American countries, Ramos writes a weekly column for more than 40 newspapers in the hemisphere (distributed by The New York Times Syndicate) and is featured in the largest Spanish-language website in the United States (univision.com).
Leaving Mexico due to censorship and determined to practice journalism with complete freedom in the United States for more than 35 years, Ramos says that, as an American citizen, he values the words of the Declaration of Independence: “All men are created equal”. The idea that the president, a natural-born citizen, and a naturalized immigrant, all possess equal rights is what he loves most about America.
As a true believer in the American dream, Ramos continues to be a strong advocate for immigrant rights from his platforms in the U.S. and Latino media, reaching millions of people around the world every day.
References:
Recent Comments