The recent George Soros-backed takeover of 18 Hispanic radio stations, including Miami’s flagship conservative Radio Mambí, is doomed to fail, according to two hosts who quit the station as a result of the planned new progressive agenda.
“This is going to be a failure — I am 100 percent sure of that,” Venezuelan-born former Radio Mambí host Lourdes Ubieta told The Post she believes. She quit the station after she learned of the takeover during the summer. “They did this to silence conservative Hispanic voices but it’s not going to work.”
In June, the Soros-backed Latino Media Network bought Mambí — a mainstay of Miami’s hardline anti-Communist Cuban exile community for decades — and 17 other Spanish-language radio stations from TelevisaUnivision in an estimated $60 million deal. The newly-formed network is run by two former Democratic operatives, Stephanie Valencia and Jess Morales Rocketto, who worked on Barack Obama’s and Hillary Clinton’s political campaigns. Valencia also worked in the Obama White House.
Lakestar Finance, an investment firm tied to Soros Fund Management, is the key backer but there are other individual investors including actress Eva Longoria.
Last month the FCC formally approved the deal, clearing the way to turn Radio Mambí and the other stations into a new progressive network. Altogether, the sale includes 18 stations, among them 10 AMs and eight FMs in the biggest US markets. Cities included are Los Angeles, Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, McAllen, Fresno Chicago, Las Vegas and WADO-NY, the Spanish-language home of the New York Yankees.
Though the sale infuriated some Republican lawmakers, their protests weren’t enough to shut down the sale.
In a letter to the Federal Communications Commission opposing the Radio Mambí buyout, Florida Republican legislators including Sen. Marco Rubio and US Rep. Maria Elvira Salazar wrote that the Latino Media Network could “exercise virtually uncontested influence over nearly one third of all Hispanics across the country.
“Far from benign, the proposed sale is the latest in a series of moves by elite progressives desperate to claw back support from Hispanic voters, who have rightly turned their backs on Democrats and their socialist priorities,” the lawmakers wrote.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ team also released a series of ads criticizing the takeover, arguing that the new ownership group would seek to spread disinformation.
“What breaks my heart is that Radio Mambí, which has always been an icon of freedom, is now in the hands of the enemy,” Ubieta said.
She and two other Radio Mambí hosts, Dania Alexandrino and Nelson Rubio, all of whom quit over the new management, are now at Americano Radio in Miami, which bills itself as the nation’s first conservative Spanish network.
“The Democrats are master manipulators,” Alexandrino told The Post. A Boston-bred Puerto Rican host and reporter, she quit Radio Mambí last summer after she was told of the Soros deal.
“They want to silence and censor Hispanic conservative voices. They have a way of telling Democrats are the party of minorities and the party of the poor,” Alexandrino added. “They treat Hispanics like victims. I wouldn’t take a penny from them. My dignity is not for sale.”
Radio Mambí did not return calls for comment.
Rubio held a press conference in Miami when he quit Radio Mambí in July.
Radio Mambí “has been the voice of the Cuban exile, the voice of conservative men and women who defend freedom, democracy, family principles, truth, and faith in God,” Rubio said. “Many in this community have felt betrayed by the acquisition of this radio station by a company financed by the left liberal extremist, George Soros.”
Media Research Center director of MRC Latino Jorge Bonilla predicted that the Latin Media Network’s takeover will backfire and drive Hispanics more to the right. Bonilla first flagged the planned deal last summer as a “panic move” because he said the Democrats were alarmed by seeing Hispanics drift away from the party in Florida.
“There’s a battle for control of information in the Hispanic community and this is a deep strike in that battle but a very ham-handed one,” Bonilla told The Post.
“It’s a desperate move from the left to counter advances made by the Hispanic community, which is moving to the right,” Bonilla claimed. “This is not about countering disinformation. It’s about calling anything that deviates from the standard left line as ‘disinformation.'”
Concern about misinformation on Miami’s Spanish-speaking radio first surfaced in a report after the Jan. 6 insurrection. The report, issued by the PR firm Prospero Latino and the progressive political organization Florida Rising, said that the biggest offenders were three shows on Radio Mambé and one show on Actualidad Radio.
Politico ran a story about alleged “disinformation and deceptive claims” being fed to Florida Latinos it in Sept. 2020.
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez took that ball and ran with it a month later on Twitter.
“There is a massive Spanish-language disinformation campaign happening on social media networks targeting our election,” AOC tweeted at the time. “Please check in on your parents and family and, if possible, coach them in how to identify questionable content.”
Amore Rodriguez, secretary of the progressive group Florida Grassroots Coalition, who grew up listening to Radio Mambí with her family, told the New Times of Miami that the rhetoric put out by the station in recent years has been dishonest and destructive.
“What’s really sad is that we’ve seen it turn into this manipulation and, to me, a very targeted fear tactic to get Latinos to freak out and be afraid of what this country can become,” Rodriguez opined.
In 1985, what was then known as WGBS was sold for $3.5 million to self-made millionaire businessman Amancio Victor Suarez, owner of the Mambisa Broadcasting Corporation. Mambisa was named for the mambises, Cuban independence fighters of the 19th century.
It came under Univision ownership in 2002 after a merger with the Hispanic Broadcasting Corp.
A spokesman for the Latino Media Network emailed the following statement to The Post:
“The stations we acquired in Miami have been institutions serving the Cuban community in South Florida for decades. We believe wholeheartedly in that mission, and we will remain true to that spirit of liberty that has guided them over decades.
“We also believe in freedom of expression and a free press which values verifiable facts and balance. All points of view will be welcomed and encouraged to debate in the free marketplace of ideas, so our listeners can make informed decisions for themselves and their families.”
Bonilla, who for months has been crusading against what he calls “Radio Soros,” remains cynical.
“The establishment of “Radio Soros” as a trusted purveyor of information is critical to the next stage of The Great Spanish-Language Disinformation War we’ve seen unfold over the past few years,” he wrote last month. “As conservative alternatives finally emerge, it remains to be seen whether *this* venture will be successful.”
