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We are less than one week away from Election Day. Have you voted already?

Like my mini-docs, my newsletter explores the hyphen between two topics through the lens of Latino culture. In this newsletter, I’m exploring the hyphen between:

- Fernando

Disclaimer: This is an op-ed, meaning it is “opposite-editorial,” is not a journalistic article and reflects my personal opinion.

When I still worked at NBC, an acquaintance and I were talking about our jobs. He’s an engineer. I’m a journalist.

“Oh yeah, I’ve always wondered. How much do you pay for interviews?” he asked.

I scoffed at the question, confused such a question even exists. Images of my Journalism 101 course in college and codes of conduct PDFs I’ve had to sign at different jobs flashed through my brain. “We don’t pay people for interviews. If we did, that wouldn’t be journalism,” I said.

In retrospect, I shouldn’t have been surprised he asked that question, and I shouldn’t have scoffed. I don’t know the first thing about what electrical engineering implies, so why would I expect him to know how journalism works.

I was reminded of this exchange this past week, when Memo Torres, a journalist known for unrelenting coverage of ICE raids and immigration enforcement, announced he was parting ways with L.A. TACO, a small Los Angeles-based digital news outlet that had rose to prominence for its unrelenting coverage of ICE raids and immigration enforcement. The fact that Torres said he was “surprised” by the split and the lack of information about what led to this moment from both Torres and L.A. Taco triggered comment feeds filled with speculative comments trying to fill in the blanks. When more details came out, like that Torres was in a relationship with a politician he reported on, we started seeing something else:

Different understandings of what journalism ethics are and how much they matter.

Three comments stood out to me:

One remarked something along the lines of “C’mon. Journalists and politicians are not supposed to date. That’s journalism 101.”

The second one was something like, “Oh whatever. There are bigger issues to worry about. He’s covering ICE!”

Another said, “As a journalist, he should not be dating a source or someone he is reporting on.”

All are wrong.

The first one is wrong because there is no ethics clause that says journalists can’t date politicians. No such rule exists controlling who a journalist dates or marries.

The second one is wrong because where would you draw the line on when it’s ok to worry about conflicts of interest? It would only not be ok and something to be concerned about if he wasn’t covering ICE,

The third one is wrong too because

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Do you use words like “asina,” “muncho” or “truje”? You might speak New Mexican Spanish.

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