No Matter What Language, It's all About Anchor Face Time
When Univision Anchor Jorge Ramos got thrown out of a Donald Trump press conference, the anchor made sure his network had it covered from all angles.
The exchange between the two is one of the most remembered moments from the Trump campaign so far.
But, according to a lengthy NY Times article, Ramos made sure that before the exchange between he and Trump happened, that his network had all the angles covered.
The Times writes that Ramos arrived almost two hours early to grab a seat in the front row while his team set up two cameras: one to film Trump and one to film Ramos. Even before Trump entered the room, Ramos knew he would stand up when he asked his question. He’d studied Trump, he told me, and noticed that it was easier for Trump to silence reporters when they were sitting down. He also wanted to be equal to Trump, visually, and to be miked separately so that, for his audiences at least, his voice would be as loud as Trump’s.
When the Times suggested that such preparations turned the news into a kind of contrived performance, Ramos countered that performance was very different from acting. Television news, he argued, can’t be wholly improvised. Flights need to be booked. Press passes must be requested and approved. “TV doesn’t happen,” he said. “You produce TV.” And if the cameras are not rolling, there is no story.
To prove his point, he cited the case of The Des Moines Register, the Iowa newspaper that was denied press credentials for at least one Trump campaign event after it published an editorial titled “Trump Should Pull the Plug on His Bloviating Side Show.” “What’s more important?” Ramos asked me: the ejection of one reporter or the exclusion of an entire newspaper? Yet for the average television viewer, The Des Moines Register incident might as well never have happened. It occurred off-camera.
No matter if you anchor on the Spanish network's or the English speaking networks, its all about face time. Anchor face time speaks every language.