Top 4 misleading narratives found on Miami’s Spanish-language media this election cycle
The Biden administration has treated the southern border like a sieve so that undocumented migrants can flood the voting booth. U.S. infectious disease expert Anthony Fauci profited off the pandemic.
Those narratives were among the misleading and false talking points broadcast to the listeners of Miami’s Spanish-language radio and social media programs during the weeks leading up to the Nov. 8 election and beyond, according to a study and review by the Miami Herald, el Nuevo Herald and Florida International University.
The project, launched following the controversy in 2020 over the veracity of content in Spanish-language media, found that some of the most popular social-media platforms and stations trafficked in hyperbole and outright misinformation. Out of dozens of clips reviewed, these were the top-four misleading narratives:
Voter fraud
As in English-language media, breathless allegations of election fraud found their way onto Miami’s Spanish-language talk programs.
During a Nov. 9 YouTube live stream, host Alex Otaola cited what he called “voting irregularities” and played a video of former President Donald Trump claiming “a lot of bad things’‘ are happening in polling places across the country. Otaola mentioned Arizona’s Maricopa County, where technical glitches contributed in some places to long Election Day lines. But he offered few details supporting his claims that people were not allowed to vote in unnamed “majority Republican cities or counties.”
READ MORE: How partisan angst, conspiracies thrive in Miami’s Spanish-language media echo chamber
There have been no examples of significant fraud in the Nov. 8 election. Still, other claims of voting irregularities surfaced in Miami.
Also on Nov. 9, a caller to the afternoon program on Radio Mambí 710 AM made claims that Democrats have “increased” efforts to steal elections. The caller, without being challenged by host Omar Moynelo, questioned why the votes were being counted a week after the midterms concluded, a phenomenon that was neither unusual nor illegal, as some states processed scores of late-arriving mail ballots.
“How is it possible that it ... you have to wait so long for the election results? That’s what these Democratic swindlers have created to steal the elections,” the caller said. “All of the countries of Latin America give the results the same day.”
Conspiracies surfaced prior to the election as well. During a late-October discussion on Radio Libre 790 AM’s Buenos Días Americano about a pending Washington, D.C., Council vote that would allow non-citizens to vote in local elections only — leaving intact the prohibition on non-citizens voting in state and federal elections — the hosts discussed that “it has been said” that the U.S.-Mexico border has deliberately “been opened” to allow migrants into the country to vote, which would “contaminate” elections.
Immigration
Perhaps counter-intuitive for a community heavily influenced by immigration and political refugees, talk of criminals flooding through the border was rampant, and false and thinly-sourced narratives about immigration abounded.
On Actualidad’s afternoon drivetime program, host Agustín Acosta repeated assertions on Oct. 18 from an anonymously sourced article published by conservative outlet Breitbart that claimed the Venezuelan government was emptying its prisons and pushing inmates north to the U.S. border. The report, which was repeated by members of Congress, has not been debunked, nor has it been confirmed by the Department of Homeland Security or any other media outlets.
Otaola told his listeners on Nov. 8 that the Biden administration had intentionally handed over control of the border to drug-trafficking gangs, and that the Biden administration “rewards delinquents who attack decent people,” claims that are demonstrably false.
Also on Otoala’s program, U.S. Rep. María Elvira Salazar said in October that she believed the Biden administration had secretly negotiated with Cuba’s communist government to deport certain Cubans connected with a protest movement on the island led by the wives and female family members of dissidents.
Salazar said she came to the conclusion as the family members of Cuban migrants detained in South Florida and threatened with deportation visited her office to seek her help, revealing links to the Ladies in White movement in Cuba.
The Biden administration would announce shortly after that Cuba had agreed to again begin receiving deportation flights from the U.S. But the assertion that specific Cubans would be deported on behalf of the island’s communist government was “false,” a Department of Homeland Security spokesperson told the Herald.
Political extremism
In October, two violent incidents on opposite ends of the country — attacks on a GOP canvasser in Miami and on House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s husband in San Francisco — became talk show fodder.
After Republican U.S. Sen. Marco Rubio tweeted to his 4.4 million Twitter followers that GOP canvasser Christopher Monzon had been beaten at the hands of “4 animals who told him Republicans weren’t allowed in their neighborhood” in Hialeah, some hosts ran with the claim that Democrats were responsible for the incident.
Otaola called the attack “terrorism” on Oct. 24 and said “this is what they have tried to normalize during this year-and-a-half of Democrats in power. That’s why you can’t do anything with the Democrats other than remove them from power.”
The claim that the attack was politically motivated first came to life on Mambí, which Monzon’s father called the morning after the incident. Monzon, who was wearing a Rubio shirt during the incident, is adamant that he was attacked because he was a Republican.
But that claim is disputed. New evidence emerged casting some doubt on his story, and scores of Democrats quickly condemned the beating of Monzon, though that was sometimes ignored when the topic came up on talk programs.
As for Paul Pelosi’s attack at his San Francisco home, callers on La Poderosa and Actualidad suggested the attack was staged. The hosts encouraged speculation with talk on La Poderosa of a “black cloud” over the incident and on Actualidad of “loose ends” in the official story about what happened.
Covid-19 misinformation
COVID-19 and vaccines were more frequently the focus of Spanish-language misinformation in the earlier days of the pandemic, but the topics still have legs.
For example, in October, Radio Mambí host Rodrigo Duran suggested that Dr. Anthony Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, had financial incentive to push vaccines in 2020 and 2021, a claim for which there is no supporting evidence.
Financial disclosures for 2019, 2020 and 2021, the most recently available view of his finances, do not document specific investments in pharmaceuticals. Fauci and other federal employees in the field of medical research have received royalties from drug companies, but Fauci has said he donates the money to charity.
Additionally, stories still circulate about research into the coronavirus.
Near Election Day, Verdades Ofenden (Truths Offend), a popular Spanish-language group on the Telegram messaging app known for spreading false theories, posted a Daily Mail article claiming that researchers at Boston University created a new, deadlier COVID virus strain in their lab that killed 80% of mice.
“It will no doubt come as a surprise to many Americans that these types of experiments continue to be carried out in the United States, despite concerns that similar studies may have led to the global outbreak of Covid,” the post read.
Boston University stated that the Daily Mail article was false, inaccurate and misrepresented what the researchers actually found.
This article is part of a project on misinformation in Spanish-language media by the Miami Herald, el Nuevo Herald and researchers at Florida International University. It is funded by Journalism Funding Partners, which received support from the Knight Disinformation Fund at The Miami Foundation. The Miami Herald retains editorial control of the content.
McClatchy Senior National Security and White House Correspondent Michael Wilner, Miami Herald staff writer Bianca Padró Ocasio and Miami Herald researcher Monika Leal contributed to this report.
This story was originally published December 15, 2022 at 5:30 AM.
