Jorge Ramos

Jorge Gilberto Ramos Ávalos (born March 16, 1958) is a Mexican-American journalist and author.

Regarded as the best-known Spanish-language news anchor in the United States of America, he has been referred to as "The Walter Cronkite of Latin America".

Based in Miami, Florida, he anchors the Univision news television program Noticiero Univision, the Univision Sunday-morning political news program Al Punto, and the Fusion TV English-language program America with Jorge Ramos.

He has covered five wars, and events ranging from the fall of the Berlin Wall to the War in Afghanistan.

Ramos has won ten Emmy Awards and the Maria Moors Cabot Prize for excellence in journalism.

He has also been included on Time magazine's list of "The World's Most Influential People".

Jorge Gilberto Ramos Ávalos was born on March 16, 1958, in Mexico City, Mexico, to a Roman Catholic family, and he was raised in the Bosques de Echegaray neighborhood of Naucalpan, a suburb of Mexico City.

His father was an architect.

He attended Catholic schools where he states he was abused by the priests.

Ramos graduated from the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City where he majored in communications.

Ramos has a Master's degree in International Studies from the University of Miami.

In 1983, he left Mexico on a student visa for Los Angeles, where he planned to enroll in the UCLA Extension's journalism classes.

In 1984, he was hired by KMEX-TV, an affiliate of what was then the Spanish International Network (SIN) in Los Angeles, which operated on a shoestring budget in a run-down facility on Melrose Avenue.

At KMEX, Ramos felt he could express himself freely: "To me it was a palace... the United States gave me opportunities that my country of origin could not: freedom of the press and complete freedom of expression."

Three years later, he became the host for KMEX's morning program, Mundo Latino.

In 1987, Ramos then joined SIN's national operation which was rebranded as the Univision network a year later after coming under new ownership; Univision has a broad entertainment and news-sharing agreement with Televisa.

Since 1987, Ramos has been the anchorman for Noticiero Univision, a nightly Spanish language newscast, alongside colleague María Elena Salinas.

He also hosts Al Punto, a Spanish-language Sunday public affairs program aired weekly on Univision, and America with Jorge Ramos, an English language news magazine on Fusion TV.

In 1989, as he watched the fall of the Berlin Wall, Ramos has said he remembered thinking, "This is why I am what I am!"

Other world events he covered include the Salvadoran Civil War, the Persian Gulf War, the dissolution of the Soviet Union, and the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

During the United States's War in Afghanistan, Ramos traveled there on his own while on vacation because his network refused to send him.

Throughout his career he has covered five wars.

In 2002, he founded Despierta Leyendo (Wake Up Reading), the first book club in the history of Spanish-language television.

In 2007, the University of Richmond conferred an honorary Doctor of Letters on him.

Ramos worked for Grupo Televisa's flagship XEW-TV in Mexico City for the network's local version of 60 Minutes.

At the age of 24, he quit that job after a story he produced that was critical of Mexico's government was censored.

On February 21, 2008, he represented Univision in a Democratic debate between Senators Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama on The University of Texas at Austin campus in Austin, Texas.

In 2012, Ramos, critical of the lack of Latino moderators in any of the U.S. presidential debates, complained that the debate commission was "stuck in the 1950s".

When Univision held its own forums with candidates Barack Obama and Mitt Romney, Ramos challenged both of them on their immigration policies, specifically Romney's "self-deportation" policy, which Ramos considered an insult to Latinos, and Obama's deportation of more than 1.4 million people, and his reneging on his promise to address immigration during his first term.

Washington Monthly named Ramos the broadcaster who would most determine the 2012 presidential election.

Ramos' increased notability, however, led to criticism of his advocacy approach.

To this Ramos has stated, "Our position is clearly pro-Latino or pro-immigrant ... We are simply being the voice of those who don't have a voice."

As of 2014, KMEX-DT his Univision 34 news shows regularly beat their English language competition among young viewers.

He has interviewed multiple world leaders including Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George H. W. Bush, Fidel Castro, Daniel Ortega and Hugo Chávez.

Ramos also writes a bilingual newspaper column that is published internationally, and appears regularly as a pundit on English-language cable networks, like CNN and MSNBC.

Polls among American Latinos rank him as the most trusted and influential Hispanic in America, surpassing all other political leaders, and his Q Score among Latino audiences places him between soccer star Lionel Messi and pop singer Shakira.

In 2015, after Donald Trump became a presidential candidate, Ramos pursued an interview with Trump for months.

When he sent Trump a handwritten request in June, Trump, who had filed a lawsuit against Univision over its decision to drop the Miss Universe pageant following the candidate's comments about Mexican immigrants, posted Ramos's letter on Instagram, which exposed Ramos's cell phone number.

Trump later deleted the post.

On August 25, 2015, Ramos attended a news conference held in Dubuque, Iowa, by Trump.