The airwaves may be filled with CNN's Lou Dobbs talking about "the illegal alien amnesty." But with another anchor, on another network, the delivery is just as direct about "los indocumentados," those without documents.

And that network – the Spanish-language Univision – consistently beats CNN and many others of the English-speaking world in ratings. The anchor is Los Angeles-born María Elena Salinas, the daughter of an indocumentado, at the network for Immigrant America.

"I don't think it ever dawned on me that our newscasts would rate higher than ABC, NBC, CBS in markets such as New York, Los Angeles and Miami," she says, stopping for a one-beat pause, "in general-market ratings."

She's been the female anchor for almost two decades now at Noticiero Univision, with her co-anchor Jorge Ramos. And she defines her role as different from journalists in the English media.

For Spanish-speaking immigrants, there's a hunger for information and news that serves their day-to-day functioning and sometimes survival in the States, the 51-year-old says. Her audience needs to know both their rights and their responsibilities, she says.

When she first started out in her hometown of Los Angeles at KMEX-TV, the predecessor network of Univision was a chain of only four stations, including the first Spanish-language station of the States, KCOR-TV in San Antonio. She'd soon be advised to defect to English-language media.

Ms. Salinas' father had insisted his three daughters speak Spanish at home. The request was a bit odd as he was a man of many languages. He spoke six, including Latin. And that clue is part of the Pandora's box that she was left when her father – José Luis Cordero Salinas – died on Aug. 6, 1985.

He spoke Latin because he'd been the Rev. José Luis Cordero Salinas, a Roman Catholic priest in Mexico City. It wasn't until several days after his funeral that Ms. Salinas uncovered the family secret.

The mystery kicks off Ms. Salinas' first book, a memoir titled I Am My Father's Daughter: Living a Life Without Secrets. It was co-written with Pulitzer-winning writer Liz Balmaseda and is available in Spanish and English.

The book was published by Rayo, the Latino-focused division of publishing giant HarperCollins. The imprint has recently taken on books by other Hispanic broadcast personalities, who can harness their airwave muscle to propel sales. Among them: Mr. Ramos, her co-anchor.

So to little surprise the Web site of Univision Communications Corp., a publicly traded media company that last year brought in $2 billion in revenue, contains video interviews with Ms. Salinas about her book. And, in last week's Dallas visit, two Univision radio stations were active in the promotion of Ms. Salinas and her book.

"I think the concept that Rayo is developing is that in order to be successful, the book has to be tied to television," says Ilan Stavans, a Mexico-born author and a literature professor at Amherst College.

Without broadcasting's publicity muscle, books by Latino authors fare poorly, says Mr. Stavans, who's championed many authors. "I think that these books are very important. They make people feel that there is a champion for them, in front of the mikes or cameras. Will these books last? That is another story."

Ms. Salinas' story is about the daughter of immigrants and how she attempts to place her life in context. At the heart of her book is her father, a disciplined, inquisitive man who grew disenchanted with one of the world's most undemocratic of institutions: the Catholic Church. Ms. Salinas admits that her relationship with the church is strained over abortion and the pedophilia scandal.

The common thread between father and author is their fascination with world events and their idealistic need to make a difference. She writes him a letter on what they could share were he still alive, conversations she insists are not for men only.

"In my father's family, women were not educated to be professionals," Ms. Salinas says in an interview. "They were educated to be housewives. My father was a priest during the more conservative times of the Catholic Church."

Her memoir takes readers through heady coverage of such leaders as Pope John Paul II, Mexico's Subcomandante Marcos and Chile's Augusto Pinochet. And there's the back story of how Univision journalists stood up, in the late 1980s, to Mexican media giant Televisa, which once worked hand in glove with the Mexican government and continues to be a part owner of Univision.

In one particularly revealing story, early in her career, she returns to KMEX studios to tell her boss "there's no story" in the race by Steve Rodriguez to become Los Angeles' first Latino city councilman. It's too hard to find people who know of the election, or can vote, she recounts.

That was precisely the story, her boss retorted.

She'd approach that story so often, in various permutations, she writes, that voter participation became a professional cause. She even worked directly with the National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials.

And so last week in Dallas, at the group's national convention, Ms. Salinas was given an award for her "civic journalism." She adds it to two Emmys and a national Edward R. Murrow award for team coverage of the Atlanta Olympic Park bombing.

At a convention book signing at the Fairmont Hotel, Carlos Salinas, a Round Rock City Council member, got his copy autographed with " un saludo especial" by Ms. Salinas. "The Latino population is actively searching for a journalistic source with the credibility and honesty of María Elena Salinas," said Mr. Salinas, who's no relation to the author. "A lot of it isn't that we are not informed. It is that we are misinformed," he says, as he rattles off the commentaries on CNN and Fox News.

The next day, in a Webb Chapel Road barrio, amid a jumble of taquerías and panaderías, Ms. Salinas takes questions at an outdoor book fair. Tables spill with books in Spanish. Some spill with books enticing folks to learn English: Inglés en 100 Días, Inglés Para Enamorar (English in 100 Days, English to Fall in Love ).

The heat sticks like wet velvet to her fans. Ni modo, so what, says Graciela Ortiz, an immigrant from Guanajuato who waits with her two young daughters, Maroly, 9, and Emaly, 6. "I like her personality and that she is a journalist," Ms. Ortiz says. "Many of the things that she does help people."

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