What's the matter, Florida GOP? Scared of losing radio outlets that repeat your lies? (Opinion)
Miami Herald via Yahoo News
An informed community one that not only flaunts the word freedom but actually practices its most basic component, free speech shouldnt be a threat to anyone.
Yet, Floridas GOP and its Cuban-American supporters are in a tizzy over the prospect that the sale of two iconic Miami news radio stations will open to debate the Republican-monopolized political conversation in the countys Spanish-language airwaves.
What are they afraid of, losing fake news outlets?
Because, with the announced sale of legacy stations Radio Mambi and WQBA to the newly formed Latino Media Network, Republicans in Florida seem to be losing the most important mouthpieces theyve used to spread misinformation among Miami-Dades faithful Cuban-American and other Hispanic voters.
Truthful information has been hard to come by on Cuban radio.
Even pro-Trump media outlets, for example, retracted lies about the nature of the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol and the 2020 election results. Not Miamis Cuban radio, where one host kept blaming the Black Lives Matter movement and pounding the lie, with zero evidence, that Donald Trump had won the election and Democrats committed voter fraud.
Cuban radio hosts constantly cast Democratic candidates and anyone with opposing viewpoints as a socialist and a communist. Their unchecked broadcasters, accountable to no one, also pass on pandemic misinformation, falling down the rabbit hole of right-wing conspiracy theories. They are a danger to their listeners.
Americans might be tempted to ask, Who cares? Theres false information spread in the English-language media, too.
The difference is that while news sources are plentiful in English, for many voters who live in an insular world and get news primarily in Spanish, radio is what they rely on, and broadcasters prey, unchallenged, on fears that the United States could become what they left behind.