Hats off to Miami groups for pointing out Spanish news misinformation. El Nuevo Herald led the way — for decades.

Congratulations to organizations like Florida Rising, Miami Freedom Project, ProsperoLatino, Latina Comunica, and others for informing the public of what Spanish-speaking (and read) media in Miami have been doing for years. 

As the Miami Herald (Ahh! The Herald… we’ll get to them later) reported in their first two paragraphs on June 2: 

“Thousands of dead people and noncitizens voted in the 2020 presidential election. There were more votes cast than registered voters. Black Lives Matter and Antifa infiltrated the deadly storming of the U.S. Capitol.

“Those are just some of the conspiracy theories compiled in a new media monitoring report published Wednesday, revealing the extent to which misinformation pervaded the airwaves of Miami Spanish-language talk radio in the immediate lead-up to, and aftermath of, the Jan. 6 insurrection.”

It turns out that after the January 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol a group of more than 20 Latino advocacy groups from the Miami area sent a letter to Spanish language media outlets demanding more fact-based reporting and accountability for pundits who were fabricating crazy conspiracy theories. “The disinformation and toxic rhetoric reflected in the media is disproportionately represented in Spanish media. It’s made our work communicating on issues more difficult,” Ana Sofia Peláez told Miami New Times. Peláez is executive director of Miami Freedom Project, a nonprofit organization that advocates for affordable housing and other social issues.

Radio hosts in Miami, complained the Latino organizations, went as far as blaming groups like Black Lives Matter (BLM) and so-called Antifa for planning and carrying out the attack on the Capitol. Also claiming, without one iota of proof, that last year’s presidential election had been stolen from Donald Trump. The BLM claim I found almost amusing considering that I spent Jan. 6 glued to my television and I don’t remember seeing too many Black folk storming Capitol Hill… but, who knows, maybe they were wearing costumes of white people. Of course, even “Castro supporters” were thrown into the mix, with a little bit of Maduro and lots of Chavez. 

These Miami radio hosts, most of them Cubans, have no problem lying to their listeners. Some are even paid to do so (remember when it was discovered that Miami Herald and El Nuevo Herald reporters were being paid by the U.S. government to disinform the Miami public…). Of special note, since Castro sympathizers are also being blamed for the attack on the U.S. Capitol, these anti-Cuban journalists, most on radio, have yet to find out that Cuba is no longer governed by a Castro. It’s that or they just want to propagate the hatred many in Miami have by using the Castro brothers.

It is time South Florida, and the area’s news media outlets, accept the fact that for decades Miami has not been a place where Spanish speaking news media tells the truth. And it’s sad to say that leading the pack has been the combination of the Miami Herald and El Nuevo Herald, who, as we demonstrated on a weekly basis at the turn of the 21st century through a column known as the BS Detector, would tell their readers one thing in English and then translate the same exact article, by the same exact writer, and leave out key words or paragraphs making rabid anti-everything-Cuba Cubans in Miami happy in Spanish, while the English version might have said the opposite in the same article. Our job on a weekly basis, back then, was to juxtapose key paragraphs, headlines, and words demonstrating how the Heralds were misinforming the Miami public. As recently as 2015, we reported that the Herald was still up to its sneaky ways.

But 2021-Miami may have turned a corner thanks to a younger, more progressive and enlightened group of Latino leaders. Leaders who leave foreign affairs to the federal government and prioritize real issues affecting the Miami area — poverty, housing, jobs, etc. They are calling out the dangerous liars and manipulators of the past (and the present), and what I found most interesting was they were being given plenty of space to do so by the Miami Herald. 

So maybe, just maybe, the Herald is slowly changing also. Hopefully…?

Because the fact is that the Heralds, especially El Nuevo Herald, are greatly responsible for the ‘Fake News’ (as a former president used to say) direction the Miami Spanish language news media has taken in the past and continues to do so today.