Playing the Name Game

The anchorman formerly known as David Johnston was stuck in a dead-end job.

For six years, Johnston had served as evening anchor at two small TV affiliates in Midland/Odessa and El Paso, Texas. He wanted a shot at a bigger market or a network, but his audition tape never seemed to interest recruiters.

But when Johnston took a job three years ago at KOVR-TV in Sacramento, his career prospects changed dramatically. So did his name.

Re-christened on-air as David Ono, the 33-year-old broadcaster has fielded job offers from stations in Los Angeles and Seattle and finally has the networks’ attention, thanks largely to his new, ethnic name.

“I changed it to my advantage,” says Johnston, who still uses his original surname for legal purposes. “I’ve received a lot of interest. I think the name change could have set that off, in addition to seasoning and just getting better.”

Johnston is just one of many broadcasters playing the ethnic name game. Taking advantage of federal affirmative-action rules designed to benefit minorities, a number of reporters and anchors with Anglo-sounding last names have switched to Latino and Asian handles. The trend has led to growing outrage among some news professionals and minority activists, who argue that it cheapens the concept of affirmative action and raises troubling issues of journalistic ethics.

Many reporters who have changed their names claim biracial status and explain that they are just borrowing a relative’s last name to accentuate their minority roots--a reversal of the age-old immigrant practice of anglicizing a foreign last name to speed assimilation in the United States.

Johnston, for instance, says he is of Asian and white descent, and that Ono is his Japanese mother’s maiden name. “It’s simple, reflects ethnicity and is very easy to remember,” he says.

Reporter Gordon Gary reached back two generations for his new name. On the air at KNBC-TV Channel 4 in Los Angeles, he uses the surname Tokumatsu, which he says was the maiden name of his grandmother, a descendant of Japanese samurai. He switched names shortly after starting his career at KESQ-TV in Palm Springs, he says.

When he considered the change, his family “began telling me about the samurai heritage, which I had so embraced,” says Gary, whose friends still know him by that name.

Others are less forthcoming. Denise Valdez, the 6 o’clock anchor at ABC affiliate KSAT-TV in San Antonio, admits that she changed her last name for professional reasons, but says that she considers herself part Latina and declines to discuss the matter further. “I’m not comfortable talking about it,” she says. “I’m sure I’m one of many people who have done so. It is advantageous in this business, but it’s not something I want to broadcast to the public.”

Indeed, the public often never realizes that a TV personality may not be quite who he or she appears to be. No one knows how many journalists nationwide have switched to an ethnic pseudonym, but there are at least a dozen confirmed examples in Los Angeles, Chicago and other markets.

Many say that the phenomenon has existed for years. Geraldo Rivera, who was born to a Puerto Rican father and white Jewish mother, has battled persistent claims that his real name is Gerry Rivers. (In a 1989 Times interview, Rivera vigorously denied the rumors, saying, “My detractors think it’s wonderful because they can say: ‘Aha! That’s the reason he’s gone so far. . . . He rode the minority thing!’ ”)

But reporters and other industry insiders say that more TV journalists these days are changing their names. The reason: an opportunity to boost their career by taking advantage of affirmative action rules or of the desire on the part of many station managers to diversify their work force and better cover the growing population of Asian and Latino immigrants.

While the practice elicits a shrug from some journalists, who liken it to an actor taking a stage name, name-changing is drawing fire from others in the industry. Critics claim that such a switch undermines the credibility of TV reporters and the concept of affirmative action. It also raises the question of whether minority status is simply a matter of one’s last name or goes deeper to encompass one’s awareness of ethnic issues and commitment to the community.

Henry Mendoza, a member of the Chicano News Media Assn. and a former news director at KBAK-TV in Bakersfield, has been a vocal critic of name-changing. He blames both reporters and broadcast executives “who play affirmative action as a numbers game. . . . There’s what I consider unscrupulous intent on both sides.”

The subject remains a sensitive one: A veteran Latino broadcaster in Los Angeles says he has known about name-changing for years but declines to speak about it on the record because the subject is “depressing.”

Meanwhile, young white reporters privately admit that they have been pressured by agents and news directors to use ethnic surnames to improve their marketability. Several TV journalists contacted for this story insisted that white reporters with scant claims to minority status have helped their careers along by switching to bogus Latino names. But the proof for such charges proved elusive.

“There are obvious benefits to being labeled Hispanic,” says Bill Slatter, a broadcast talent scout in Natchez, Miss. “Hispanic reporters and anchors are a scarce commodity.”

The situation has led to hard feelings among minority and white broadcasters who believe that colleagues are using ethnic names to gain an unfair advantage in a fiercely competitive job market.

“I don’t want to sound like an angry white male,” says Chris Williamson, a reporter at KTVL-TV in Medford, Ore., “but it can’t help sticking in your craw when you see agents and news directors falling all over themselves to hire” reporters who have adopted ethnic last names.

Williamson believes name-changing is “almost like [a journalist] staging a story. . . . We all know TV can be a very shallow business at times. There are lots of people who have done this for surface reasons and not substantial reasons.”

Industry observers say ethnic name-changing is an unintended result of government regulation. The Federal Communications Commission, which licenses U.S. radio and TV stations, has since 1969 mandated affirmative-action rules based on regional demographics, according to FCC General Counsel William Kennard.

The agency requires each station to fill out a form describing its efforts to recruit minorities and women. Management must hire a proportion of each minority equal to at least half of the proportion of that minority in the regional work force. For example, if the work force at large is 20% Latino, the station must have a staff that is at least 10% Latino. (The FCC waives the requirement if a minority represents 5% or less of the regional labor pool.)

If a station is found to violate the rules, the FCC can impose a fine. In extreme cases, the agency can also refuse to renew the station’s license. The threat of these and other sanctions can make stations vulnerable to pressure from activist groups.

Last year, Asian American groups protested what they viewed as the demotion of anchor Tritia Toyota at KCBS-TV Channel 2. And the California Advisory Committee of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights held hearings in 1994 on perceived anti-minority bias in TV newsrooms, especially at KCBS and KNBC.

But in practice, Kennard notes, stations are rarely penalized by the FCC for breaking affirmative-action rules. Nor does the agency generally demand proof of workers’ minority status.

“In most cases, we rely on the good faith of the licensee,” Kennard says. “We’re not aware that [ethnic name-changing] is a widespread problem. You have to be careful in second-guessing someone’s claim to minority status.”

The phenomenon does not seem as prevalent in print journalism, where minority hiring practices are not specifically mandated by a federal agency, nor does it arise often in other industries, according to government officials.

Name-changing for career advantage “is not an issue that’s come up that I’m aware of,” says a spokesman for the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, which enforces federal antidiscrimination laws in the workplace.

To satisfy FCC rules as well as activists’ demands, news directors who hire on-air talent seek out applicants with evident minority credentials. But because of the legal minefield surrounding affirmative action issues, few news executives make any determined effort to verify candidates’ ethnic backgrounds, sources agree.

“There’s a certain amount of ‘Don’t ask, don’t tell’ that goes on” surrounding ethnic name changes, says Don Fitzpatrick, a leading San Francisco-based headhunter for the TV news industry.

Indeed, misinformation about affirmative-action and antidiscrimination issues is common. Several industry executives confidently indicated that employers are barred by law from asking applicants about ethnicity.

“A lot of laws restrict us from asking specific questions about a candidate’s background,” says Bill Lord, news director at KNBC, who reiterated his station’s commitment to diversity. “In most cases, it would seem to me that a person’s ethnic background is fairly obvious.”

In fact, the FCC’s Kennard says, such questions are lawful as long as the information is not used as a basis for hiring decisions.

But while a person’s ethnic background may be “fairly obvious,” that has not prevented some broadcast journalists from trying to make their ethnicity a little more obvious.

Jim Simon left KNBC last January to take a job in the Chicago bureau of NBC News. He changed his on-air last name more than 20 years ago to Avila because, he says, he was named after his father, a former broadcast executive, and the broadcast union does not allow two members to share the same name. He identifies himself as a Mexican American and says Avila was his mother’s maiden name.

Simon, 40, acknowledges industry tension over the ethnic name issue. “At what point are you a minority or not a minority?” he says. “Federal guidelines say I am a minority. I was born on Downey Road in East L.A.” When asked whether he thinks using an ethnic last name has helped his career, he replies, “I don’t think it’s hurt any.”

At the same time, though, he doesn’t want to be pigeonholed as “a minority reporter.” “I want to someday cover the White House,” says Simon. “I don’t want to have to go to the ‘taco beat.’ ”

Yet other journalists have changed their names at least partly to gain credibility in minority communities they cover. At KTVL in Medford, Cathy Warren was assigned to cover stories affecting the Latino community.

“There are not many Hispanics in Medford, but there were some, and no reporters could get through to them to do interviews,” Warren says. So, at a news director’s suggestion, she borrowed her mother’s maiden name and began using the hyphenated “Warren-Garcia.” Later she dropped the original surname completely and became known on-air as Cathy Garcia.

She agrees with Simon and others that name-switching can be a career asset.

“I think it helps in the very first stage of a job search, getting a news director to see your [audition] tape,” says Warren, now a reporter at CBS affiliate KDBC-TV in El Paso.

Gary Gabriel, a reporter at KABC-TV Channel 7 in Los Angeles, says he was aware that some colleagues had attacked him for switching to a Latino last name. But his situation is unique, he says.

“I took my mother’s maiden name when I was in high school” due to private family problems, Gabriel says. “And this rumor has cropped up ever since then that I changed it when I got into the business. But I changed it years before I got into the business.

“It’s a very sore, sensitive subject with me,” he says. “You have a lot of people in this business, maybe this town, who change [their names] for cosmetic reasons, because it’s hard to pronounce, whatever. But I wasn’t in that category.”

Cheryl Fair, news director at KABC-TV, declined to comment on Gabriel’s situation or in general about the subject of name-changing.

Mendoza, of the Chicano News Media Assn., says that news directors could discourage facile name-changing by asking tough questions that would separate legitimate minority reporters from mere climbers: Are you bilingual? Do you consider yourself at ease in both Anglo and Latino cultures? “They should at least try to verify,” Mendoza argues, that reporters have some connection to the community from which they supposedly hail.

But news directors, who usually encourage reporters to chase down every lead in pursuit of a story, often shy away from thoroughly investigating the subject of minority hiring. Many say they are content to take a job applicant’s name at face value. “I’m not going to ask someone whether they’re bicultural or bilingual,” KNBC’s Lord says. “Such issues are very difficult for me to assess. Is one Hispanic employee more qualified than another because they’re bilingual?”

But without a system of checks and balances, clever job applicants who know the ins and outs of minority hiring can profit greatly. Just ask David Johnston, a.k.a. Ono. Since the name switch, his career has been on an unmistakable upswing, with offers from at least two networks and stations in Los Angeles and elsewhere. “I gladly would have taken [those jobs],” he says, but his contract in Sacramento runs through July 1997.

“I don’t regret changing my name,” says Johnston, whose resume reads “David Ono Johnston.” Prospective employers take it in stride, he says. “They don’t really say anything about it. . . . To them, it’s no big deal.”