To Hernandez, Media Missed the Real Story

Mike Hernandez was starting to relax a few hours after the verdicts in the Rodney G. King federal civil rights trial were announced Saturday morning. With the Pico-Union portion of his district quiet, the city councilman wasn’t his usually fidgety self as he waited to help inaugurate the Little League season in Lincoln Heights.

When he spoke, Hernandez turned to face the youngsters who made up the ranks of the Cubs, Braves, White Sox, Dodgers, Red Sox, Blue Jays and the A’s. He told them the trial at the Edward R. Roybal Federal Building wasn’t the real story of L.A.

“Everyone’s talking about the verdicts, but what’s going on here is more important,” he said. “Here, we have kids and parents and volunteers working together to make a better people. . . . You’re not here to terminate, to eliminate. . . . Being part of a team is the only way you can play. The future is our kids.”

Judging from their response, the 150 people who came to Lincoln Park appreciated his remarks. Hernandez had wished that the riot-readied news reporters had come to listen, too.

The complaint of many Latino leaders and activists, including Hernandez, has been that the news media, focused on the drama of the trial and the police buildup for the verdicts, has missed the real story in Los Angeles. There was little reporting, in their view, on how to make the city a better place to live.

They also repeated complaints that the Latino concerns weren’t covered as thoroughly as those in the African-American and Korean communities.

Hernandez found it particularly frustrating because since last year’s unrest, when Pico-Union was among the areas hardest hit, he has emerged as a leading spokesman for Latino concerns. Reporters repeatedly sought out his views, but it seemed to him that his answers weren’t always what they wanted to hear.

In an appearance last week on ABC’s “Nightline,” for example, Hernandez wondered why the media was focusing on Korean merchants buying guns when others, including whites, were buying weapons in greater numbers. And, was the talk on L.A. radio that the city was really preparing for World War III?

After a talk show host on KFI said his listeners could talk of little else, the councilman said there was no talk of rioting on the Spanish-language radio stations to which he listened. He added that those stations, according to recent surveys, attract more listeners than some of the English-language talk radio stations.

But Hernandez’s point was lost when host Ted Koppel didn’t follow up with another question and ended the interview.

Hernandez said in another interview that he was troubled to discover that L.A.’s “haves,” suburbanites who have demanded adequate police services for their neighborhoods, no longer trusted government to protect them. It’s a common complaint among the “have-nots” in the inner city.

“All of a sudden, they’re expressing feelings never heard in those communities,” he said. “They’re asking for more accountability (from government). But they don’t trust government enough so they’re going out and buying guns.”

Asked last Friday about the verdicts and the likely public reaction, the councilman replied: “I think the media’s going to be confused because nothing is going to happen.”

Hernandez, ending his first, abbreviated term on the council, is up for reelection Tuesday, and the media attention has the advantage of keeping his name before the public, even if he doesn’t always approve of the result.

For example, on Saturday, after the federal jury returned the guilty verdicts against Los Angeles Police Sgt. Stacey C. Koon and Officer Laurence M. Powell, he accommodated the flood of media requests. They began near City Hall, when he was stopped on his way to Pico-Union.

“I have mixed feelings about the verdicts,” he told two inquiring reporters. “It makes you wonder why the state trial had a different verdict.”

Never mind that the circumstances and the charges of the federal trial differed from the one in Simi Valley. The two scribes had their sound-bite reaction and left to interview others.

The interviews continued at the intersection of Alvarado Street and Pico Boulevard, where several TV crews were assembled looking for news.

By the end of the quiet day, Hernandez had kept appointments with Channel 11, CNN, Channel 52 and NBC News. None of them, it turned out, wanted to hear about the opening of the baseball season at Lincoln Park.