At a time when few Latinos worked in broadcast news, Bob Navarro became a news writer on “The Big News” on KNXT-TV Channel 2 in Los Angeles.
The year was 1967 and, as Navarro recalled decades later, “When I first came to ‘The Big News,’ there was not a woman reporter, not a woman writer, no women at the desk, no women producers. That’s it. There was an African American, but I was not the first.”
Navarro later became an on-screen reporter, one of a handful of Latino reporters to appear on Southern California airwaves in the 1970s.
Navarro, who was honored at the Los Angeles National Cemetery Columbarium on Sept. 12, is being remembered by former colleagues as a barrier-breaker who pushed for insightful, stereotype-free coverage of the Latino community. Had given. He died in North Hollywood on August 21 at the age of 92.
Joe Saltzman, professor of journalism and communications at USC, said, “Bob was always one of the most friendly and nice people in the news business, a business in which he experienced racism and intolerance.” “But through it all, she never lost her smile, never lost her sense of who she was.”
Born in El Paso on March 15, 1932, Robert Navarro was raised in South Los Angeles, but did not finish high school. According to Felix Gutierrez, professor emeritus of journalism at USC, he served in the military before attending broadcasting school in Los Angeles. Navarro’s career took him to Las Vegas and later to a job as a news writer at KNXT-TV Channel 2, now known as CBS Los Angeles.
Gutierrez said, “His claim to fame was the quality of his work and his dedication to journalism.”
He became familiar to thousands of Angelenos by hosting a weekly interview with his name in the title.Bob Navarro’s Journal,
He touched on all kinds of topics on the show, but one episode in 1997 marked his appearance – a cool, bespectacled reporter in a crisp gray suit, asking pointed questions. Plunging into the hot-button issue of the time, he guided a tense conversation with people offering different views about Proposition 227, a statewide measure that prohibited bilingual education in California.
This dialogue was emblematic of the deep and difficult discussions that took place on his show.
Away from work, Gutierrez said, Navarro encouraged aspiring journalists to create opportunities for themselves and realize their potential.
Navarro was one of the founding members of California Chicano News Media Association.An organization created in 1972 that advocates for diversity and accurate portrayal of the Latino community in journalism. This was a particularly difficult time for Latinos, who faced racism in the struggle for equal representation.
“We were not fully integrated, neither was our language, nor was our culture,” Gutierrez recalled. Navarro’s tenures at broadcast television stations – which included KPIX in San Francisco and Southern California’s KCET, KTLA, KCAL and KNBC – took steps to change that narrative.
Navarro turned to Spanish-language networks when Frank Cruz hired him as news director of current Telemundo outlet KVEA-TV in 1986.
Cruz, A Telemundo co-creator And a close friend of Navarro said the journalist “led the charge” to bring Spanish-speaking audiences stories that accurately reflected their daily lives. In his coverage, Navarro rejected the notion that Latinos were a monolithic community.
“We have to create in-depth coverage stories on the Latino community and all aspects of it,” Cruz said. “We didn’t want to do stereotypical stories.”
Navarro’s nearly four-decade-long career in journalism included coverage Chicano MoratoriumThis culminated in a march in August 1970 in which 30,000 protesters participated. He recalled seeing the “bloody remains” of Chicano journalist Ruben Salazar, who was killed by a tear gas canister fired by a Los Angeles County Sheriff’s deputy at the Silver Dollar Bar that day.
Navarro did not return to the Silver Dollar Bar until 20 years later, I am writing in the Times That he had long struggled to accept Salazar’s death.
“It took an act of God to refuse to let me in,” he wrote of the place, “and it took an act of God to keep me there.” Again and again my eyes went to the spot on the floor from where the beacon was falling.”
Navarro left reporting in the early 1990s to take up the position of editorial director of KCBS. Diversity in the newsroom has increased significantly since he started, but still, Navarro commented that underrepresented groups need a seat at the table In leadership positions.
According to Saltzman, she encouraged her friends who taught journalism to inspire their students to strive for quality journalism and to find stories that “nobody tells about people who look like me”.
Saltzman said, “I wish Bob could visit my USC classes today so he could see how diverse are the faces who not only look like him but who look similar to many other cultures.” “That must have put that patented Navarro smile on his face.”
Navarro was preceded in death by his wife, Carmel.
