Numerous reports have already noted the rampant misinformation targeting Spanish speakers. NBC News reported last year that while tech companies like Facebook quickly flag or remove English-language posts, the same often doesn’t happen for Spanish-language versions of those posts. Sometimes they just don’t get removed at all.
Now that we’ve put that out there, NBC News reports that Americano, a conservative outlet targeting Spanish speakers, is launching this week. One of the main strategists behind the outlet might ring a bell: Michael Caputo. Yes, the former administration official who was revealed to have celebrated blocking scientists from accurately reporting on the pandemic. What could wrong now?
Daily Kos’ Mark Sumner wrote last year that Caputo, who served as Health and Human Services public affairs chief, and a second former official celebrated forcing agencies and scientists to change their reporting on COVID-19 with a “yippee!!!” (Multiple exclamation marks theirs.) Daily Kos’ Hunter had the year prior written that Caputo is “a conspiracy crank who has already been identified as reaching deep into HHS to attempt to enforce loyalty to Trump's proclamations and false statements.”
That falls in line with reporting that November when Caputo, then still an administration official, claimed “that left-wing hit squads were being trained for insurrection and accused C.D.C. scientists of ‘sedition,’” The New York Times reported. No, sir, that actually turned out to be supporters of the insurrectionist president.
NBC News now reports that Caputo is chief strategy officer for Americano, a Miami-based outlet purporting to present “the latest in bilingual content, including daily news, commentary, and political talk, with a strong focus on Hispanic issues, business, and economics.” The outlet’s Twitter page states “No #FakeNews here,” which, when combined with Caputo’s involvement, immediately reinforces legitimate fears about disinformation.
“For those concerned about the disinformation problem harming Democrats' chances with Hispanics, this is a Defcon 1 moment,” Miami-based pollster Fernand Amandi told NBC News. “We should worry,” adding that the “ultimate act of disinformation is to pretend that this is not a big problem.” José Alonso Muñoz, deputy communications director for United We Dream, said “there has never been a greater need for Democrats to invest in sustained outreach to Latino voters.”
ABC News reported shortly before the 2020 presidential election that Florida Latinos were “being bombarded with right-wing misinformation.” Equis Labs Co-founder Stephanie Valencia further noted in The Washington Post in October 2021 that “we’ve seen that Facebook will flag vaccine misinformation content in English, but the same content in Spanish takes days to get flagged, if it ever does.”
Valencia also noted “online activist group Avaaz found Facebook failed to issue warning labels on 70 percent of misinformation in Spanish, compared to only 29 percent in English.” Federal Trade Commission official Rebecca Kelly Slaughter has since urged the use of “all tools in our statutory toolbox ... to investigate and take appropriate enforcement actions where we can.”
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