Author Joe Torres speaks at the Guild's Freedom Awards banquet Oct. 16.

I grew up in a union household.  My father was a member of the Transport Workers Union.

My wife is a union member. And she too grew up in a union household. Her father is a retired Ford autoworker. And now, her brother is also a Ford autoworker.

My wife and I understand the important role that unions have played in giving our parents the ability to provide better lives for us. And now, it is playing a major role in our ability to provide a better live for our daughter.

This past August, my family spent a few days in Michigan. We had the opportunity to visit Detroit and my wife’s old neighborhood.  Her neighborhood still looks okay, but the same could not be said for other parts of the city.

We all know about the struggles facing Detroit. But it’s another thing to see it. Drive almost anywhere in the city and it won’t take long to see abandon homes and buildings. Those abandon homes are a reminder that real families have been impacted by our nation’s growing economic inequality. It is also a reminder of the struggles facing U.S. workers, including those working in the newspaper industry.

In too many newsrooms today, there are empty cubicles and other reminders of the crisis facing journalism.

Fewer journalists are now working at our nation’s daily newspapers -- fewer than in 1978 when the American Society of News Editors first conducted its annual newsroom survey.  And fewer journalists of color since the early 1990s even though our nation is undergoing a historic demographic shift.

The impact of this journalism crisis goes beyond the lives of those journalists who once occupied those now vacant desks. The declining number of working journalists impacts the news and informational health of our communities.  You don’t have to look any further than Baltimore to understand why.

A 2009 study found that the Baltimore Sun is producing 73 percent fewer stories than it did in 1991 in a city where African Americans make up close to 65 percent of the city’s population. This is simply stunning and should make everyone fearful of all the critical issues that are not being covered.

There are many reasons why newspapers and journalism faces a precarious future, but a primary reason has been the result of years and decades of media consolidation.  

Bernie Lunzer, the president of the Newspaper Guild, has said that consolidation has resulted in less content, fewer journalists and less diversity in both content and staff.

This is why it is so critical that journalists fight for the future of their profession. This is why the Newspaper Guild and CWA are needed now more than ever to ensure the public receives the news and information they need so they can more meaningfully participate in society.

Many journalists do not believe they should be advocates of media policies dealing with ownership issues.  I understand why many feel this way, but I respectfully disagree.  

A colleague of mine often said that it’s tough to be neutral about your own demise. I agree. Journalists have shown they are certainly not neutral when it comes to advocating for shield laws. They understand these laws are critical to allowing them to do their jobs.

But so are issues determining our nation’s media ownership landscape. And whether you like it or not, newspaper owners have no problem speaking on your behalf, telling lawmakers in Washington that allowing greater consolidation will result in saving newsroom jobs. We know this isn’t true.

Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. once said “Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.”  And the fight over the future of our nation’s media industry really matters.

Over the past decade, I have had the honor of working with Juan Gonzalez, the great columnist for the New York Daily News and Co-Host of Democracy Now! on addressing the impact of our nation’s media inequality on journalism and people of color.

We co-wrote a book - News for All the People - that came out last year that discusses many of the issues I am speaking about tonight.

We began working closely in 2002 when Juan was elected president of the National Association of Hispanic Journalists. I was the group’s deputy director.  

Juan pledged that NAHJ was going to lead the effort in fighting against greater media consolidation. And we did. The association raised our voices to challenge Federal Communications Commission Chairman Michael Powell who was determined to dismantle our nation’s media ownership rules. He thought it was a good idea to allow one company to own up to three TV stations, eight radio stations, local cable franchise and the daily paper all in the largest markets.

As an association of Latino journalists, we could not remain silent. We knew greater media consolidation would mean that many journalists of color would be the first fired since many were the last hired. We knew greater consolidation would harm the quality of journalism. We knew it would threaten the future of minority broadcast ownership since so few people of color own broadcast outlets.

Thankfully, the FCC has been unable to further relax our nation’s ownership rules because of successful court challenges brought by several groups, including the organization I work for, Free Press.

But that has not stopped the FCC from caving in to big media companies. Even under a democratic administration, the FCC blessed the massive Comcast-NBC Universal merger last year.

While I believe in journalism, I am often troubled with so much that continues to take place.  It is often hard to feel good about the state of journalism when people of color are often covered stereotypically as problem people.

But this is nothing new.  Our nation’s media system has a long history of promoting racism.

The first colonial newspaper, Publick Occurrences, in 1690 referred to Native Americans as savages; the Boston News-Letter described African Americans as being addicted to stealing and lying.  These early papers served as a warning of what was to come.

The penny press provided editorial support for racist government policies to remove Native Americans from their lands and supported the government’s territorial expansion into the Southwest by seizing land that belonged to Mexico.

The birth of the Associated Press helped to spread racist news coverage more quickly with the help of the telegraph. And many newspapers supported lynching or instigated deadly race riots such as the riot that took place in Wilmington, North Carolina in 1898. Josephus Daniels, the publisher of the Raleigh News and Observer, played a central role in the overthrow of the local government that killed as many as 60 African Americans.   

This is why it is critical for people of color to speak for ourselves, to tell our own stories. It is the reason why our nation’s first black newspaper --  Freedom’s Journal – was founded in 1827. 

The publishers of Freedom’s Journal declared in its first edition:  “We wish to plead our own cause. Too long have others spoken for us. ...From the press and the pulpit we have suffered much by being incorrectly represented."

This quote is so powerful because it is as true today as it was nearly 200 years ago.

Freedom’s Journal was founded at a time when our nation’s first newspapers for people of color began to appear. There were more than 80 Spanish-language newspapers and 30 African American newspapers published in this country prior to the civil war.

How did this happen? How were people of color able to publish their own newspapers during a time of brutal oppression?

They were able to publish their papers because US postal policies subsidized the delivery of newspapers, it created a decentralized newspaper industry, giving an opportunity for people of color to speak for themselves.

But throughout history, whenever technology changes, it changes the existing media system.  New industries emerge such as: the telegraph, radio, TV and Cable TV. When this happens, our government must decide how regulate each new industry. Does it allow the greatest number of voices to participate, or does it turn over control to the hands of a few?

Starting with the telegraphy, our government has turned over control to a few corporate gatekeepers who determine who gets to speak, often silencing the voices of people of color.

For example, when our government regulated commercial radio for the first time in 1927, it chose to award nearly all of the most powerful stations to NBC and CBS. It even awarded a station to a newspaper in Washington, D.C. that was an organ of the Klu Klux Klan.  But not a single person of color received a license.  The voices of people of color were ignored.

But a series of events during the civil rights movement made it harder for the government and media companies to ignore those voices demanding greater media equality.

A federal the court granted civil rights leaders and the United Church of Christ the legal right to challenge the broadcast license of WLBT-TV in Jackson, Miss, in 1966, a station that often aired programming supporting segregation and was run by a White supremacist. This was critical because for the first time, citizens won the legal right to challenge a broadcast license.

Then in 1968, The Kerner Commission report found that the news media contributed to our nation’s racial unrest. The Report stated:

“If what the White American reads in the newspapers or sees on TV conditions his expectation of what is ordinary and normal in the larger society, he will neither understand nor accept the black American. By failing to portray the Negro as a matter of routine and in the context of the total society, the news media have, we believe, contributed to the black-white schism in the country”

And by the late 1960s, the FCC adopted rules that called on broadcasters to hire a workforce that reflects the community they serve.

These events provided civil rights and citizens groups with greater leverage to hold broadcasters accountable

It resulted in more than 340 broadcast license challenges from 1971 to 1973.

It led to the first significant wave of journalists of color to enter our nation’s newsrooms.

ANSE and RTNDA began conducting its annual newsroom survey on the racial and ethnic make up of our nation’s newsrooms. As a result, the first journalists of color associations were founded.

But the progress made to democratize our nation’s media system started to come undone in the 1980s. The Regan Administration relaxed ownership rules and rescinded regulations that allowed citizens to hold broadcasters more accountable.  In 1995, the Republican congress ended the most successful program to date to increase minority broadcast ownership. A year later, President Clinton signed the 1996 Telecommunications Act, which unleashed new a wave of media consolidation.  

The newspaper industry was not immune to the wave of consolidation remaking our nation’s media system. From 1994 to 2000, there were more than 700 transactions involving the sale of a daily newspaper.  And even though the average operating profit margins for newspaper soared to over 20 percent by 2000, too many newspapers were reducing their commitment to journalism in their zeal to maximize profits.

The pressure on newsrooms to maximize profit got so bad that Jay Harris shocked the industry when he resigned as the publisher of the San Jose Mercury News in 2001 after refusing to make further staff reductions in order to fatten the company’s margins.

While the Internet is certainly a disruptive technology, many newspapers failed to deal with the changing media landscape in their pursuit for profits. Instead they continued borrow to finance mergers and are now struggling to pay down the debt, making it harder to cope with changing media landscape and nation’s economic downturn.

As a result thousands of journalists have been laid off. There is a lot of anxiety about the future of the profession for those who remain employed.  I have heard the concerns from friends over the years attending many journalism gatherings.

Several blame the Internet for the current state of journalism; the thought goes to no one wants to pay for content, they want it for free. While I understand their frustration, I often believe it is misplaced. 

French writer Victor Hugo once said: “If the soul is left in darkness, sins will be committed. The guilty one is not he who commits the sin, but the one who causes the darkness.”

Now I am not saying that people using the Internet to get their news are sinners, what I am saying is that many newspaper companies helped to create the darkness.

This is why we need a strong Newspaper Guild, this is why we need a strong Communications Workers of America, this is why we need strong media activist groups like Free Press. This is why we need more everyday people fighting for a just media system.

We can do this by telling the FCC no to more media consolidation. The commission may soon decide lift the newspaper-broadcast ownership rules, which Bernie Lunzer warned would speed up the demise of journalism.

We can say no to outsourcing local news coverage. We can tell authorizes to stop arresting journalists covering protests. We can urge fellow journalists to advocate for policies that improve the state of journalism, not harm it.

The last thing I would like say is that race remains a central issue in the news media. I am thrilled that CWA will be issuing a Brownout report with an NAHJ board member next year that will examine network news coverage of Latinos. It is a report that NAHJ use to publish annually.

The report is important because people of color are still too often covered as criminals or described in the dehumanizing term “illegals.”  I believe that journalism has too often perpetuated racism and injustice in our society rather than shine a light exposing it.

We need more journalism to be a liberating those voices fighting for a just society. I believe we will find that it will liberate more than just those who have been oppressed, but those who been influenced by the forces creating the darkness. 

So thank you Bernie and Carrie for inviting me to speak. It has really been an honor.