Brian Lehrer: Brian Lehrer on WNYC. Right-wing disinformation campaigns don't only happen in English. An article in The New Yorker reports that they're targeting Spanish-language media in this country too and describes how one new company called The Latino Media Network recently purchased 18 Spanish-language radio stations across the country in an effort to fight disinformation campaigns and help Spanish-speaking Americans make sense of the news.

Joining me now to talk about what this means for Spanish speakers in this country and US politics and journalism more broadly is Graciela Mochkofsky. She's a contributing writer for The New Yorker and her recent article in the magazine is titled A Different Kind Of Bid to Win Over the Spanish-Language Media Audience. We'll also talk about her new role as dean of the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY. Welcome to the show, Dean Mochkofsky, and congratulations on your appointment at, let me say, the school that produces so many of our best WNYC and Brian Lehrer Show employees.

Graciela Mochkofsky: Thank you. Good morning.

Brian Lehrer: Before we get into Spanish-language media and democracy and disinformation, the content of that, I want to start by asking you a language question, and that is about the word Latinx. You use it in the subhead of The New Yorker article, "A new company has acquired 18 Spanish-language radio stations serving 10 of the largest Latinx-populated cities in the country." You also cited in a 2020 article for The New Yorker that only 3% of Latinx people use that term. I will say we already got one email from a listener who, I don't know their background, so I can't say Latinx or not, is saying like, "Elitist using Latinx." Is it becoming a more widely accepted gender-neutral term in the community and why did you use it in the subhead of the article or use it in general?

Graciela Mochkofsky: I use it in general, and it has become weaponized mostly by conservative groups who make it code for progressive or for "woke". I think a lot of the comments I get when one of my stories comes out, particularly in Twitter and social media, there's always this large number of messages attacking the use of Latinx. It has become part of the political conversation and I think you have to see it as part of the current political polarization.

Let me tell you why I use it and why people use it. For that, I think it's important to understand what is it for. Latinx is just one of the labels that have been used to describe a population that is very diverse and that includes very different communities from Latin American heritage. This started in the '60s. The first label was Hispanic. It's still around and a lot of people prefer that label. Actually, the majority of Latinx, Latinos, Hispanics who are asked by the Pew Center, for example, how they prefer to identify, they say they would prefer to identify mostly either by their country of origin, so as Mexican Americans or Puerto Ricans, Boricuas, or Cubans, whatever it is.

Then the second choice is usually Hispanic in number of responses. Latino came about in the '70s, and then Latinx is the latest of these labels. They all represent a political moment and they all represent efforts by a groups who are fighting for civil rights and economic and political rights for the population. Historically, before these labels existed, the government saw us as white. There was no other demographic or race or ethnicity that allowed the government to identify our communities. What that meant was that the inequities and the discrimination that our communities have suffered for the longest time remained invisible.

This became first a question of the census, so how to get resources to these communities to empower them and if the government didn't see them as a specific group that had specific challenges and discrimination.

Latinx is the last one of these. It's a very, very clearly generational label. It represents or it tries to incorporate to the pan-ethnic label and identity, gender and race rights. I like it because of that. I can't find in my heart any reason to dislike those efforts. I approve those efforts. When you see the 3% that you mentioned that came out of a Pew Center poll two years ago, and if you actually look at the data, it shows that if you see just the people who are young, 25 or younger, the percentage is much, much higher.

Younger Latinos or Latinx prefer it to older Latinxs, but there's also younger people who don't like it. I did a poll with my students and it was divided. I think that's in a nutshell. I do always focus on what is it for. This is not to identify people individually. I do ask people how they prefer to be identified when I write about Latinx stories, but it's about the general population.

Brian Lehrer: I don't understand the backlash from people to however people would like to be called. This email that I refer to from a listener, it was just three words. It said, "Latinx? Such arrogance." I don't get it, but I'll tell you why I like it and I wish there was an English language equivalent, because it makes the default reference to people in general, in this case, people of Latino, Latina background, it makes the default reference gender-neutral.

Graciela Mochkofsky: Exactly.

Brian Lehrer: Then if somebody wants to be identified as male, female, non-binary, whatever, they certainly can as individuals. Like you say, you offer that courtesy to your students and everybody. I wish we had that in English.

Graciela Mochkofsky: This actually is in English because this is a word that-

Brian Lehrer: That's an English word.

Graciela Mochkofsky: We use it in Latin America too, but it was a way to-- Spanish is much strongly gendered than English. The preference in Latin America would be to say Latine and use an E. It is the preference. You have to see this, of course, in the context, and this is a global phenomenon of gender rights and gender-neutral language. There's a lot of backlash against it.

Brian Lehrer: I guess, I really put it badly when I said I wish we had that in English because, yes, Latinx is an English language word. I guess, I meant I wish we had it for universal, let's put it that way, reference to people who are Latinx, white, Black, whatever, just a reference in English to people in general that would be non-gendered like that and as easy to trip off the tongue. Why not Latine? Someone else mentioned to me that Latine is commonly used in Latin America. Why not that? Why the additional term of Latinx?

Graciela Mochkofsky: Well, it's not really an additional term. It was a term that took off. If you look at how this term became popular, and Pew Center, again, has done that research, you see that it really took off right after the Pulse nightclub massacre in Florida. There's other options. I'm sure this will not be the last label for this population. There will be others. It's not just a question. This is not something that is original to Latinx communities. You've seen labels to name Black communities in this country. That has changed with time and every generations has rejected the previous label and has chosen a new one because it connects with the lived experience of-

Brian Lehrer: Of that time.

Graciela Mochkofsky: -people and particularly of young people.

Brian Lehrer: Indeed. Moving on to your reporting on Spanish-language disinformation, your reporting in The New Yorker, this latest bid, as you call it, for Spanish-speaking audiences is aimed at fighting disinformation that's been spreading across the Spanish-speaking community for some time now. Give us the background on that before we talk about the company that you profiled that's trying to acquire a lot of Spanish-language radio stations to fight the disinformation. What's the disinformation campaign? Who's doing it? What does it tend to focus on?

Graciela Mochkofsky: Thank you. Yes. I think the best way I can explain this is to first frame it in the context of the political battle to win over the Latino electorate. You need to understand that context to understand what the conversation is about. In the past presidential election, as I'm sure you reported, Latinx became the second largest electoral group in this country outnumbering Black people for the first time or Black voters for the first time. That is about 32 million Latinos who are eligible to vote then and the number grows by the day because every day there's many Latinos who turn 18.

This facts and the increased political participation of Latinos has made these potential voters who for the longest time were mostly neglected or taken for granted, particularly by the Democratic Party, and this according to polls on how Latinos have felt taken for granted, a new center of political attention. You have to see this political battle for this electorate. Something new is happening in that battle. The first thing that is happening is that they are the center of the political attention for the first time ever.

Republican, what has happened now is that, traditionally, parties assume that the majority of Latinx people would vote Democratic. That is still the case, a large majority of Latinos still in progressive and vote Democratic candidates, but in the past few elections, particularly 2020, Republicans started seriously investing in these voters and spending real money appealing to the more conservative communities. There's a lot of conservative Latinx people out there because this is a population of more than 62 million people. One in five Americans is Latinx. Of course, you have all the possible ideologies and political shapes and tastes.

What happened was that in 2020, about 38% of Latinx voters chose Donald Trump over Joe Biden. That was a 10-point increase when compared with 2016. That was a wake-up call for progressives under Democratic party. They started looking at what was happening in counties and states where the upswing has been the largest, particularly Miami-Dade County and the Rio Grande Valley in Texas, where Trump's upswing was more than 20 points. That is the context.

When the postmortem started to come out, disinformation and misinformation directed to Spanish speakers in the US was seen as one element. Not the main one by any stretch, but it was seen as an important factor. This is a specific thing. This is right-wing information that is false, that is created and deliberately spread through particularly social media channels and Spanish-language radio stations, not through mainstream or traditional media, to change minds or to just get to these voters.

I think also importance is you asked me to offer some context. I'm sorry because I'm a long-form writer and a book writer, so I always -- If I'm going too long, you let me know, but I think this is relevant for the conversations. I [unintelligible 00:13:32] this context.

Speaker 2: No. It's all been clear and it's been great. Dean Mochkofsky, I just want to invite you to make a finer point even on what you were saying because there is a difference, which you acknowledge, between the Republican versus Democratic battle for Latinx votes. That's obviously a legitimate thing. We're in a two-party system. People, as you say, can have different opinions politically indifferent leanings and everything else. It's certainly legitimate for both parties to compete for those votes. There's a difference between that competition and disinformation, which is what you're pointing at, right?

Speaker 1: Right, exactly. I just really think it's important to define what we mean by disinformation. It is generally defined as false information that is knowingly spread to deceive or mislead people. That is not new. Propaganda has been around for a very long time and you can argue that many mainstream media outlets have knowingly spread false information that has harmed communities, particularly communities of color, for example, and we've seen several mea culpas coming out about that in the past couple of years.

I think it's important to say that what we are talking about are deliberate efforts by mostly right-wing groups to establish false narratives, particularly among communities of color, and Spanish-language is a big chunk of where that disinformation goes to or through those channels as part of a political, regional, or ideological agenda and using mostly social media to do so. Most of the disinformation avoids the traditional media outlets and goes straight to the target via WhatsApp, or Telegram, or Facebook, YouTube. In the case of Spanish-language disinformation- [crosstalk]

Speaker 2: Then, are there certain themes that tend to be proliferating?

Speaker 1: Yes. Those are very clear.

Speaker 2: Disinformation themes, yes?

Speaker 1: Yes. In Spanish-language media, those are mostly about the proven lie that Trump won the 2020 elections. The big lie. Another one that was very popular in Spanish language media, particularly in Florida, was that the people who broke into Congress on January the 6th were members of Black Lives Matters, which is, of course, another lie. It was very widespread when the pandemic began and the first year of the pandemic around the vaccine.

I wrote another piece about this, about what types of narratives those were, but basically they had false science saying that the vaccine could kill you, that there were chips that were injected into your body and things like that.

Speaker 2: Wow. Your article is largely about the Latino Media Network, which required a number of Spanish-language radio stations that could reach 10 of the most populated, with Latinx people, cities in the US. How can a radio station network fight disinformation on social media, which seems to spread so much more quickly than "old media" like this?

Speaker 1: That's a very good question. I don't think they're trying to fix disinformation or misinformation in social media channels. There's been other efforts and there are ongoing efforts by many different players around that. Some of those have to do with pushing and pressuring the platforms to have filters for information and to flag false information or false narratives. There's a lot of very interesting efforts by Spanish-language media, Univision and Telemundo to begin with to fact-check.

They are also connecting to the Spanish-speaking, Latinx people through those social media channels to try to correct or counter the disinformation and misinformation. I think this specific enterprise, the Latino Media Network, bought by-- These are 18 radio stations that were owned by Univision, and they are, as you said, serving 10 of the largest Latinx cities in this country.

The leaders are two progressive entrepreneurs who are very active in advocating for increasing participation of Latinx people, Stephanie Valencia and James Morales Rocketto. They are very close or they were very close to the Democratic Party. Valencia was a special assistant with President Barack Obama and Morales Rocketto worked with both Obama's and Hillary Clinton's presidential campaigns.

They insist that this is not a political move. They say this is a long-term move to really have an impact and, again, advocate for increased civic participation of Latinx and to give them information that is packed-based. I think this element is very important. Most of these radio stations are not news-orientated. They have commentary, but the majority of these radio stations offer music and sports commentary. The one in New York is purely a sports station.

I think the important fact here is that you need to understand the role of Spanish-language radio in mobilizing Latinx people historically in the US. Spanish-language radio has played a crucial role in advocating for the rights of Latinx immigrants, and one good example, I think, would be to see the role that DJs in Spanish-language radio stations in California played, mobilizing people in the big immigration protests in 2006.

I think it's an attempt to have a say in that and to counter false narratives in these stations. The more problematic station is Radio Mambi in Miami. This is an old radio station that serves Cuban population in Miami, and it's very conservative. It leans conservative. It still has a very cold war anti-communist narrative to it. It, of course, has to do with the experience of being a Cuban who was kicked out of their country, who had to immigrate and living in exile. I don't think this new effort will completely change that narrative and completely change the content of the radio station. That's not what they say. What they say is they're going to add voices just to counter and to make sure that everything that is discussed is fact-based.

Brian Lehrer: We're getting a Florida call. Let me take her. Not from the Miami area, over on the West Coast, but Eve in St. Petersburg, you're on WNYC. Hi, Eve.

Eve: Hi, Brian. First-time caller, long time listener. I'm from New York City, grew up there in the Latino community. I consider myself Latina, but absolutely do respect Latinx, Latine. Your guest, I believe, commented on the misinformation regarding vaccines throughout the whole COVID pandemic, which we're, unfortunately, still involved in. I have family in Brooklyn and Queens who sadly succumbed to this horrible misinformation, which resulted in a family member dying because they refused to be vaccinated.

It's just, as a family member, you don't know how to have these conversations when they're just so deeply entrenched in these lies. It's a difficult situation when you consider yourself informed and you want to help people and you want to help them understand. It's just really difficult.

Brian Lehrer: I hear you, and there's the individual communication which we talked about so many times on the show about how to talk to people, how to have a depolarized conversation, to try to get people to understand the disinformation that they may be hearing about vaccines or other things. Then there's the media aspect, the mass media aspect, which this conversation is more about and what happens on Spanish-language radio stations, for example. Eve, thank you for calling us for the first time. Please call us again. Francesca in Queens, you're on WNYC. Hi, Francesca.

Francesca: Hi, Brian. I'm just calling about, I lived in Miami for a number of years, and so I have a lot of friends down there who are Cuban, different generations of the Cuban community. I'm just thinking of one particular instance when during the last election, I had this naïve idea that because the felons were able to vote and because all the Puerto Ricans that had gone to Orlando after the hurricane, that that was going to push Florida over the top with the blue voting. I was really wrong.

What I started seeing was that this machine of-- I have friends who are Cuban. They've been here 20 years. They're against dictators and all of this. I'm getting posts and Spanish-language posts, "Joe Biden is a pedophile." All of it is really, really, really-

Brian Lehrer: Yes, QAnon stuff.

Francesca: -[unintelligible 00:23:46] stuff. It was really intense. These are friends, these are people that I know and love. I tried to say like, "This is propaganda. You know what propaganda is. I'm telling you this is propaganda." All these friends of hers, I was getting attacked from all sides, all kinds of crazy vitriols. I eventually had to stop because I was like, "We're not going to be friends anymore and I will have no opportunity to talk to her about this if I keep this up or trying to combat this, but it was really unsettling. It had clearly been a machine that had been moving that I hadn't noticed because it was so entrenched in her brain by the time she started posting things. [crosstalk]

Brian Lehrer: Do you find it ironic, Francesca, that these kinds of false, as you say, propaganda, memes would take root in a Cuban community that's probably got its antenna high for propaganda coming from Castro's Cuba?

Francesca: Yes. I find it excruciatingly ironic. I tried to say as much to my friend. I was like, "If Fidel tried to tell everybody this, that, the other about how great it was going to be, and people were sincere and they fell for it, and this is what happened and you're against it and all of this, and it's the same thing. He's doing the same thing." The absolute fury at the idea that I would be suggesting such a thing. It was impenetrable. The irony is not lost on me, but it was absolutely impenetrable.

Brian Lehrer: That is really good survey.

Francesca: Yes. The emotional reaction was not anything that I could circumnavigate with logic.

Brian Lehrer: Francesca, disturbing, but thank you for that report from the front. I appreciate it. We're running out of time, but let me get one more caller in here from a different Latinx community. Roger in Roxbury, New Jersey, you're on WNYC. Roger, we've got about a minute for you, so let me apologize in advance for keeping you short.

Roger: All right. No problem, Brian. Actually, I've changed my point to coalesce it in. For the guest, what do you think that the inroads that the Pentecostal communities have made into the Latino community has had on the political leanings of the Latino community in this shift?

Brian Lehrer: You identified yourself to our screen, or as a first-generation Mexican, do you see it in that community?

Roger: Mexican American, yes. I do see it, especially in my own family, and I'm from South Texas, from the Rio Grand Valley.

Brian Lehrer: That's a politically conservative Pentecostalism, Dean Mochkofsky, and we have a minute left in the segment. Anything you want to say?

Graciela Mochkofsky: His voice broke, I couldn't understand the question.

Brian Lehrer: Oh. He's concerned about the rise of Pentecostal religion with a conservative political band from what have been traditionally Catholic communities.

Graciela Mochkofsky: I have a book coming out in two weeks that is actually very connected to that idea. The short answer is that the growth of Pentecostalism and evangelical Christianity in Latin America is a very real phenomenon. It's not a new phenomenon, and you see that in many countries, there's a lot of research about that to go to. The more the Pentecostal list movements and evangelican Christian communities grow in Latin America, we see a political empowerment for these communities, Guatemala, Brazil, for example, [unintelligible 00:27:44] and we see that here, I think it is completely connected. Those groups are very conservative and that's why the connection with the right wing of the Republican Party is so easy.

Brian Lehrer: Please come back when your book comes out. I see the title is The Prophet of the Andes: An Unlikely Journey to the Promised Land, and we can have a fuller conversation about this. We'll also have to talk, at that time, I guess, once you've been fully installed and ensconced, for at least the beginning of a semester, about your new role as dean of the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY. We'll talk about journalism education, we'll talk about The Prophet of the Andes if you promise to come back.

Graciela Mochkofsky: Oh, I'll be delighted if you invite me. Thank you.

Brian Lehrer: Graciela Mochkofsky, a New Yorker contributor. We've been talking mostly about her recent New Yorker article, and dean of the Newmark school. Thanks so much for being on today. This is great.

Graciela Mochkofsky: Thank you.

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