What’s the matter, Florida GOP? Scared of losing radio outlets that repeat your lies? | Opinion

An informed community — one that not only flaunts the word “freedom” but actually practices its most basic component, free speech — shouldn’t be a threat to anyone.

Yet, Florida’s 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 county’s 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 they’ve used to spread misinformation among Miami-Dade’s faithful Cuban-American and other Hispanic voters.

READ MORE: New radio network with ties to national Democrats buys Miami radio stations

Adiós misinformation, hello debate?

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 Miami’s 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?” There’s 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.

For decades, the top names on Cuban radio have exerted substantial influence in local, state, and congressional elections, helping politicians like Sen. Marco Rubio build a profile from the ground up. They keep him and others in power, no matter how they vote on social issues that go against constituents’ best interests.

Obfuscation has been a winning strategy for Republicans, who prefer to talk up Cuba’s freedom than reveal to elderly people that their votes in Congress or in the Florida House and Senate are the reason for Medicaid cuts.

Democracy for Cuba & Miami

An opening to more professional journalism — and robust debate about issues — can only be a plus for Miami.

“The more sources of information there are, the more informed our community will be,” said longtime Cuban-American civic activist Rafael Peñalver. “We should not fear divergent points of view. On the contrary, that will strengthen us as a community.”

Peñalver, a Coral Gables lawyer, added: “Isn’t that what we want for Cuba? To have freedom of expression and multiple sources of news. Isn’t that what we have been asking for all along, that there is no monolith? The concept of free speech is what we have been advocating for Cuba. Then, how can we have a monolithic point of view here [in U.S. politics]?”

The stations’ sale to a group made up mostly of Democrats — including billionaire philanthropist George Soros and two former Obama administration officials, plus Latina broadcast legend Maria Elena Salinas and some disenchanted “Never Trump” Republicans — could be a game-changer for local, state and even national politics.

That’s why Gov. Ron DeSantis from Tallahassee, Lt. Gov. Jeanette Nuñez in Miami, and the national right-wing media apparatus have echoed Cuban-exile group leaders who staged a press conference Wednesday at Brigade 2506 headquarters, where they demonized the sale.

“Soros-funded election ‘manipulation,’ “ Fox News called it.

This, from the party that staged the first attempted coup in American history — and is still trying to cover it up. This, from the party that planted sham candidates in Florida Senate races.

READ MORE: Cuban exiles vow to boycott if Radio Mambí is ‘silenced’

Nothing to do with Cuba’s freedom

In Miami, the rallying cry against the sale is being cast as a matter of Cuba’s freedom — as if this worthy objective were the purview only of Republicans. It’s obvious Cuba is, once again, being used to deflect uncomfortable truths about the GOP on domestic issues.

Some exiles protesting the sale are longtime fighters for Cuban democracy who have forgotten that la causa has been historically a bipartisan pursuit. When they use racist DeSantis lingo, like attacking “woke” at a press conference, it’s an indication that the last thing on their minds is a pluralistic Cuba.

The buyers say the purchase of 18 stations nationwide is an attempt to reach out to a national Hispanic community too often ignored. The point is to give communities a forum, a spokesman told me, not to push only one point of view.

Republicans, who have turned everything into a partisan brawl, only have themselves to blame.

They launched the industry of passing lies as truth in Florida. They went fringe on democracy, preferring to fight cultural wars than actual problems, and are passing laws quashing free speech from the classroom to the boardroom.

Cuban radio has been their echo chamber, effective in smearing reputations, dividing and radicalizing Miami. It has taken Democrats too long to wake up, but it looks like they’re finally up to the challenge of combating misinformation.

For the first time in decades, Republicans appear to be on the losing side of the Cuban radio wars in Miami-Dade.

That’s what the fuss is all about. It has nothing to do with Cuba’s freedom.

If it did, they would be on the side of democracy in Miami, too.