Cover Story - Soledad O’Brien (cont'd)
Did you have an idea of who your audience was going to be?
The thought never crossed my mind. I didn't think about target demos. The way I work is to try and find good stories. If you mean to try and give certain things and set up certain boxes, I think your story will suffer. You have a character and you just have to let their story unfold, that is Documentary 101.
How did you select the people you interviewed? Were there any that you regret not including?
They have to be a strong character---and carry their story. Some people are great on paper--but not on TV and some stories just don't pan out. Sometimes it was also geographical, like we could not have all the stories come from Miami---though you can absolutely do a Latino in America in Miami! For characters, we looked for those whose story wasn't typical--something with a different twist, where you learn something.
There are those within the Latino community who felt the documentary was too negative . How do you respond to those criticisms?
I don't think that's true. When we broke it down demographically, a number of young people said they disagreed with that. They didn't see the story of Cindy Garcia as a negative. Her story was about a large number of kids dropping out of school--which is a real crisis in our country. I was surprised that people saw her story as a negative story. I thought she was an incredibly hard worker. Did she make some stupid mistakes? Absolutely. Did the structure of the educational
system in East L.A. do her wrong? Absolutely. After the documentary, people offered to be her counselor, to pay for her college and her daycare because they knew she was a sure-bet. They knew she could be successful if she could just get a break. No one worked harder than Cindy. In that same piece I talked about Monica Garcia who ran the school board, another woman who had four kids and was getting her Masters---and the Mayor! I felt Cindy was really strong character who had an interesting story to tell--and that is my job. I think counting successes and failures is a very constricting way to look at these stories. But it is what it is, you cannot tell a story about 51 million people and get it all in. It is hard to watch a story about yourself and not be very judgmental. I completely understand people's opinions on this but I think we told a lot of stories in this documentary.
Because this series reached such a wide audience, including areas where the Latino community is not well known, some critics felt that as a Latina, you had a responsibility to present the best representation possible…
That was the point of the documentary…there is no one person who represents the Latino community. I can do a story about a boy who goes off to Harvard, but he would not be anymore of a representation of the Latino community than Cindy was. We don't do PR. Again, we tell people's stories and hopefully there will Latino in America 2 , Latino in America 3 and more stories all across the network. I think the bigger issue is invisibility, since none of these stories are told. I would hate for people to say ‘Don't do a hate crime story because that is such a bummer,' that would be so sad. I think the bottom line is that CNN should tell these stories all the time, and I am looking forward to finding more!
With 51 million stories (and counting) waiting to be told, Maria de la Soledad Teresa O'Brien definitely has her work cut out for her.
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