‘That could have been me’

Maria Hinojosa revealed the secret to excellent journalism is rooted in mastering the art of humility.

Washington State University’s Edward R. Murrow College of Communication honored Hinojosa with the Murrow Lifetime Achievement Award in Journalism during its 48th Murrow Symposium on Wednesday. She, alongside many other journalists, were recognized for outstanding achievement in the field.

One being former Mayor Glenn Johnson, who received the inaugural service award for work as a broadcast journalist and 35 years of teaching broadcast journalism at Murrow College until his retirement from that position in 2014.

The Murrow Symposium is an annual series that has acknowledged top leaders in the communication industry since the 1990s. In memory of Washington State graduate and longtime CBS broadcaster Edward R. Murrow, the program aims to investigate journalistic accomplishments and challenges through interactive experiences and conversations.

This year’s focus is Murrow’s commitment to innovation, courage and integrity, as well as highlighting ways communicators illuminate untold stories.

Hinojosa has 30-plus years of experience as a Latina journalist, and has racked up a long list of achievements in that time. She’s recognized as one of the first Mexican-American journalists in many newsrooms she’s worked in, like those of PBS, CBS, WNBC, CNN and National Public Radio.

She’s received four Emmys, two Robert F. Kennedy Awards, the John Chancellor Award, the Studs Terkel Community Media Award and the Ruben Salazar Lifetime Achievement Award.

In 2010, she began Futuro Media, a journalism nonprofit that explores American diversity. Its podcast series, “Suave,” won a Pulitzer Prize in 2022. She also anchored the Emmy Award-winning talk show “Maria Hinojosa: One-on-One.”

Born in Mexico City and raised in Chicago, Hinojosa made a name for herself by forming personal connections with her work. She said she often asks her peers and students why they are journalists, and they often go back to their childhoods. So does Hinojosa.

While traveling with her mom and three siblings to visit her father in Chicago, she said an immigration agent stopped her family, which had come to the U.S. with privilege and a green card. The agent still tried to separate Hinojosa from her family.

Years later, she and her family were reminded of the trauma when journalists reported on what she said was “the sounds of crying children screaming for their parents” as the U.S. detained child migrants in 2017.

“My mom called me and she was crying,” Hinojosa said. “She said those others who are suffering because their children were taken away — that could have been me. And those babies in those cages, that could have been you.”

She said at that moment she understood why she became a journalist, among other things, and the commitment to covering the stories that would go untold.

“I am one of them because I lived through that,” Hinojosa said

She said having humanity is essential to the profession, something Murrow recognized as well.

“He was able to do the essential things that journalists have to be able to do,” Hinojosa said. “Which is to see yourself in the person that is most unlike you. And in that process, he allowed us to identify he could not be more different than (us).”

She said journalists make history and document history, and understanding the historical connection reporters have had with their work is quintessential to the profession.

“As journalists, we have to trust our gut in terms of our moral compass and our values,” Hinojosa said. “Our responsibility as journalists is to not be aware of our biases, but to be fair and to be truthful and to be transparent.”

All in-person symposium events are being held at WSU’s Pullman campus Wednesday and today, along with virtual happenings.

More information about the Murrow Symposium can be found by visiting murrow.wsu.edu/symposium.

Pearce can be reached at epearce@dnews.com