INTERVIEW: María Elena Salinas returns to investigate real stories
Photo: María Elena Salinas is the host of The Real Story With María Elena Salinas. Photo courtesy of Investigation Discovery / Provided with permission.
María Elena Salinas, one of the most successful journalists in the United States, has even more time to devote to her Investigation Discovery series after leaving her full-time job at Univision recently. The Real Story With María Elena Salinas returns to the true-crime network Monday, June 4 at 10 p.m.
Salinas has carved out a career at the top of broadcast journalism, including a few decades in the anchor’s chair for Univision. Her I.D. show is a departure for the TV host. The one-hour reality program, now in its second season, centers on stories of horrible, scary crimes in the United States, and she’s dedicated to portraying the victims as more than mere statistics.
“This time around, we have 10 completely different stories, but once again, we see a common denominator of some of these stories that could have been prevented, everything from women falling prey to charming men who end up being monsters, to a 3-year-old little boy who is kidnapped from his room, to an older woman who is killed for money,” Salinas said in a recent phone interview. “So they’re all very interesting cases that make you realize that we’re so vulnerable.”
For Salinas and her team, what makes an engaging case for the series is the “story behind the story.” She needs to find a new angle to these cases, some of which have taken place many years ago. Also, because she has more time to devote to the series, Salinas traveled around the country for season two to get even closer to the crime scenes.
“Sometimes when we report something in the news, whether it’s just a 2-minute story on television or just a few minutes on radio or just a few columns on newspaper, we don’t really have enough room to give all the information, and then sometimes the information isn’t all there,” she said. “There’s evidence that is not allowed in a trial. There is someone who has seen something who didn’t dare to speak out because of fear, and we look for those stories where we can actually bring something new to the case. And also to me it’s very important to find stories where we can humanize the victim and make sure that they are not only another statistic, but that we actually get to know them as humans — their name and their face and their story. And we speak to their family members to see what the world lost, what they lost and what was it that put them in these very vulnerable positions.”
Her team members at I.D. look into a lot of cases and only start producing an episode when they are sure it’s worth the exploration. They need to be able to talk to people, and if family members or witnesses are not available, it’s a bit of a deal-breaker.
“There’s a lot of cases that we look into, but we don’t actually start working on them, the production, until we are completely convinced that we can talk to people,” Salinas said. “I think there might have been a couple of cases where people just didn’t want to speak. They were afraid to speak. They didn’t want to speak in front of a camera. They wanted to just leave it behind and forget about it. Those are usually the things that hold us back from doing a story that we begin to pursue. As you can imagine, and I always say this, but fortunately for us that work in the true crime genre, we have a lot to work with because there are so many crimes out there. But unfortunately we have a lot to work with because that means there’s just so much evil and hatred and poisoned hearts and minds out there, [and] there’s so many people [who] fall victim to these twisted minds. But some of the stories are told; some of them are not because people don’t want to speak up.”
True-crime television and podcasts have taken off in popularity over the last few years. Investigation Discovery leads the way on reality programming that looks back at iconic and forgotten crimes, and then there are the many podcasts and books that place the sleuthing in the hands of the average Internet surfer. For Salinas, the draw of The Real Story is its novelty.
“Well, to some people, these are just new crimes,” she said. “They’ve never seen them before. They’ve never talked about them before, and then other times, it just takes a long time to really find the truth. It takes a long time for people to be able to speak up. Lives are affected by this. Sometimes a whole community is affected by a crime, and the last thing that they want to do is talk about it.”
Sometimes technology also prompts a new view at an old crime.
“There is new technology that makes us see evidence that maybe wasn’t available before, not only DNA evidence but also phone evidence and cell phone evidence,” she said. “Now there’s a new technology that lets you track Wifi if someone was in Wifi, so that we can know whether that person was actually at the place where the crime was committed or if they’re innocent. So I do believe that there’s part of us that just wants to know. There’s always that curiosity, but also there’s a learning experience. We all want to make sure that justice is served, for the family and for us as a society. We want to be able to detect the signs of danger when they’re right around the corner, they’re in front of us, and sometimes we don’t realize it. We want to protect ourselves, and we want to protect our family. And I think that that’s what makes us so eager to watch these stories.”
Salinas counts herself among the millions of people who tune in to these true-crime stories.
“I’m an I.D. addict myself, and if I want to switch channels, it’s very difficult for me to switch channels because I need to know what happened next,” she said. “I think it’s just that human nature to need to know what happened. We always learn, and we have compassion for the person who ends up being a victim. And we remember them, and we remember their name. And we remember their story, not just a number.”
By John Soltes / Publisher / John@HollywoodSoapbox.com
The Real Story With María Elena Salinas returns Monday, June 4 at 10 p.m. to Investigation Discovery. Click here for more information.
