Tag: Fox

Murdoch and other Fox execs agreed 2020 election was fair but feared losing viewers, court filing shows

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Dominion’s court filing released Monday, a response to Fox’s own recent submission in the case, portrays senior executives at the network as widely in agreement that their network shouldn’t help Trump spread the false narrative. Yet, they repeatedly wrestled with how firmly to disavow it without risking their Trump-friendly audience.
“Some of our commentators were endorsing it,” Murdoch conceded during his sworn deposition, appearing to insist that Fox hosts did not speak for the network. “Yes. They endorsed,” he said.
“It is fair to say you seriously doubted any claim of massive election fraud?” a Dominion lawyer asked the broadcasting mogul.
“Oh, yes,” Murdoch replied.
“And you seriously doubted it from the very beginning?” the attorney asked.
“Yes. I mean, we thought everything was on the up-and-up,” Murdoch said.
But as time passed, the network agreed to air Trump’s claims because of their inherent newsworthiness, executives said, while suggesting their hosts would challenge or push back on the false claims. Dominion said that pushback was tepid at best and drowned out by louder and larger embraces of Trump’s claims.
The filing also underscored the extraordinary linkages between Trump’s White House, his campaign and the network, whose top executives and programmers were regularly in contact about editorial decisions and issues related to political strategy. A series of episodes detailed in the submission suggest not only that the network and its leaders were actively aiding Trump’s re-election bid, but that Trump sometimes took direction from Fox.

Murdoch, according to Dominion’s filing, said in his deposition that he “provided Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, with Fox’s confidential information about Biden’s ads, along with debate strategy.
According to the filing, Trump’s decision to drop controversial lawyer Sidney Powell from his legal team was driven by criticism from Fox.
“Fox was instrumental in maneuvering Powell both into the Trump campaign and then out of it,” Dominion’s lawyers wrote.
However, Dominion notes that Fox shows continued to have Powell on as a guest even after Trump disavowed her. The voting machine maker says that her continued presence undermines Fox’s claim in the litigation that it was just relaying newsworthy statements by Trump attorneys and advisers about their thoroughly unsuccessful efforts to challenge the 2020 election results.
In the immediate aftermath of the election, Murdoch emailed with other Fox executives to underscore this point, specifically worrying that some of the network’s primetime hosts might fail to get the desired message: that the vote was not tainted with fraud.
In a statement Monday, a Fox spokesperson said much of the evidence Dominion cited wasn’t relevant to the legal issues in the case.
“Their summary judgment motion took an extreme, unsupported view of defamation law that would prevent journalists from basic reporting and their efforts to publicly smear FOX for covering and commenting on allegations by a sitting President of the United States should be recognized for what it is: a blatant violation of the First Amendment,” the Fox statement said.
“Dominion’s lawsuit has always been more about what will generate headlines than what can withstand legal and factual scrutiny,” the statement also declared.
According to the evidence described by Dominion, Murdoch called Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell right after the election and urged him to tell other Republican leaders not to embrace Trump’s false fraud claims. Former House Speaker Paul Ryan, a member of Fox’s corporate board, repeatedly pressed internally to steer the network away from “conspiracy theories.” After Jan. 6, Ryan pressed his view even more forcefully inside Fox.
“Ryan believed that some high percentage of Americans thought the election was stolen because they got a diet of information telling them the election was stolen from what they believed were credible sources,” Dominion’s brief says. “Rupert responded to Ryan’s email: ‘Thanks Paul. Wake-up call for Hannity, who has been privately disgusted by Trump for weeks, but was scared to lose viewers.’”
But time and again, the executives were confronted with evidence that the network was experiencing a backlash from viewers who felt Fox wasn’t sufficiently supportive of Trump’s claims, a potential threat to the network’s viewer base.
Dominion’s lawyers argue that Fox officials soft-pedaled their efforts to rein in such statements by their own hosts because Fox leaders remained acutely concerned that their viewers would migrate to platforms that were enthusiastically trumpeting Trump’s claims, like Newsmax and One America News (OAN).
Fox has sought to assert a “neutral reportage” privilege to argue that it should not be held liable for the accuracy of statements that it attributed to others, like Trump and his attorneys. Dominion says Fox’s hosts failed to challenge those assertions even when Fox officials knew or strongly suspected they were untrue.
However, Fox’s lawyers argue that the fact that someone at the network regarded particular claims as untrue does not establish that the people uttering them on air knew that. Fox’s defense also appears to contend that the views of corporate level executives — including Murdoch — about the election fraud issues aren’t relevant to Fox’s liability for allegedly defaming Dominion
“Dominion barely tries to demonstrate that the specific person(s) at Fox News responsible for any of the statements it challenges subjectively knew or harbored serious doubts about the truth of that statement when it was published,” Fox’s attorneys wrote in their own lengthy court filing. “Instead, it lards up its brief with any cherry-picked statement it can muster from any corner of Fox News to try to demonstrate that ‘Fox’ writ large — not the specific persons at Fox News responsible for any given statement — ’knew’ that the allegations against Dominion were false.”
While the case is pending in a state court in Delaware, a judge said in a preliminary ruling last year that New York law appeared to apply and that state did not recognize the neutral reportage privilege, only a similar protection for statements that are actually uttered in official government proceedings.
The court filings released Monday contained only excerpts of the statements from various depositions, so the full context of all the statements was not always apparent.
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#Murdoch #Fox #execs #agreed #election #fair #feared #losing #viewers #court #filing #shows
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

February 28, 2023
Paolo Fox horoscope today, Monday 27 February 2023: Aries – Virgo

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Paolo Fox horoscope today | Monday February 27, 2023 | Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo and Virgo
PAOLO FOX HOROSCOPE TODAY – New appointment with Paolo Fox’s horoscope today: like every day, many Italians are looking for complete forecasts for their zodiac sign. A gesture, between superstition and superstition, to start the day in the best way. After all, Fox is considered one of the best at making horoscopes, which he exhibits on TV (in Rai programs such as I Fatti Tuo) or on the radio (on LatteMiele) and which are then reported online. But what does Fox predict for today? Below are the forecasts of Paolo Fox’s horoscope today, monday 27 February 2023, for signs of Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo and Virgo present online.
ARIES
Dear Aries, the week that starts today – Monday 27 February – will open with the astral combination of Venus and the Moon which will make you very sensitive to affection. In love, pay close attention to concrete relationships, be less impetuous. A good time awaits you at work.
BULL
Dear Taurus, according to Paolo Fox’s horoscope for today (Monday 27 February 2023), during the next few hours of this end of February and beginning of March love will be favoured, especially starting from Friday with Venus entering the sign. You will show affection with concrete gestures and you will be very possessive of your partner. As far as work is concerned, discussions are ahead, even important ones. Try to solve everything before breaking out some real quarrel…
COUPLE AFFINITIES FOR ALL ZODIAC SIGNS
TWINS
Dear Gemini, the Moon in your sign over the next few hours will make you less affectionate and rationality will prevail over emotions. For this reason you will also be very nervous at work. Try to relax a bit. Avoid useless quarrels, they wouldn’t be good for you or for others.
PAUL FOX’S HOROSCOPE 2023
CANCER
Dear Cancer, what begins today – Monday 27 February – will be a week dedicated to love with Venus in the sign that will make you affectionate and passionate. The Moon in the sign on Thursday will guarantee wonderful moments of affection in the domestic hearth. As for work, no more laziness. Take action with confidence and courage.
LION
Dear Leo, according to Paolo Fox’s horoscope for today (Monday 27 February 2023), the Moon in your sign will produce a sparkling and very ambitious influence. Your sense of humor will already be very strong today and you will be able to shine (and not a little) at work. Beware of some sentimental situations that are a little tense. They will be resolved as soon as possible. Courage!
COUPLE AFFINITIES FOR ALL ZODIAC SIGNS
VIRGIN
Dear Virgo, Venus over the next few hours will assume a favorable trine position and sensuality will be marked. Be careful not to be quarrelsome as a couple: don’t let yourself get caught up in excessive thoughts. Relax!
THE LUCKY SIGN OF TODAY, FEBRUARY 27, 2023, ACCORDING TO PAOLO FOX
The sign luckiest among you according to thehoroscope of Paolo Fox today is that of Aries: you will be very sensitive to affection. Work well too.
TODAY’S FORECAST FOR LIBRA, SCORPIO, SAGITTARIUS, CAPRICORN, AQUARIUS AND Pisces
THE HOROSCOPE OF THE WEEK: 20-26 FEBRUARY 2023
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#Paolo #Fox #horoscope #today #Monday #February #Aries #Virgo
( With inputs from : pledgetimes.com )

February 27, 2023
Opinion | The Bigger Question Behind the Fox News Debacle

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Why does this matter? Because — barring a powerful rebuttal from Fox — it means that Dominion has met a very high bar in defamation law. Because it’s in the public arena, Dominion has to prove that Fox knew they were airing lies, or “recklessly disregarded” the truth or falsehood of their reports.
It’s tempting to celebrate a verdict against Fox; “reckless disregard” might as well be its slogan. But a blow to the loudest media voice on the right would come at a time, ironically, when other conservatives have launched a fundamental attack on the free press that hits directly on the issue of defamation. At risk is a 58-year-old Supreme Court case that is a powerful protection of First Amendment rights: New York Times v. Sullivan.
In 1960, the NAACP took out a full-page fundraising ad in the New York Times, which criticized the Montgomery, Ala. police department’s treatment of protesters. The ad made a few minor factual errors — how many times Martin Luther King Jr. had been arrested, what songs the protestors sung. Montgomery County police commissioner L.B. Sullivan, who was not mentioned in the ad, sued the newspaper and won a judgment of $500,000 — the equivalent of nearly $5 million today. It was part of a wave of defamation suits brought across the South by public officials who were clearly intending to silence or bankrupt critics in and out of the press.
It was against this background that a unanimous Supreme Court overturned the verdict in 1964. But it went much further. The case, Justice William Brennan wrote, had to be framed in the context of “a profound national commitment to the principle that debate on public issues should be uninhibited, robust, and wide open, and that it may well include vehement, caustic, and sometimes unpleasantly sharp attacks on government and public officials.”
To protect that principle, the court set down a new standard: When it comes to public officials, they had to prove not just that a statement was false and injurious, but that it was made with “actual malice” — an inartful term that meant not “ill will,” but that it was published with willful knowledge that it was false or with “reckless disregard.” (An example: We got an anonymous tip that the governor was beating his children, so we broadcast it.) That standard was not enough for Justices Hugo Black, Arthur Goldberg, and William Douglas, who argued that the First Amendment protection was absolute and unconditional — even lies were protected. The court later expanded the media’s protection from defamation suits so that “public figures” meant pretty much anyone in the public eye, from celebrities to business executives.
In recent years, New York Times v. Sullivan has gotten new scrutiny by powerful conservatives. In 2019, Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas argued for a reassessment, amid consideration of a libel lawsuit from a woman who accused Bill Cosby of sexual assault. In 2021, Justice Neil Gorsuch pointed to the radical change in the media landscape as a reason to reconsider the law: “What started in 1964 with a decision to tolerate the occasional falsehood to ensure robust reporting by a comparative handful of print and broadcast outlets, has evolved into an ironclad subsidy for the publication of falsehoods by means and on a scale previously unimaginable.”
While these justices did not make an explicitly ideological or partisan point, Federal Appeals Judge Lawrence Silberman did. In a remarkably blunt dissent in 2021 where he called for overturning New York Times v. Sullivan, Silberman wrote:
“Although the bias against the Republican Party — not just controversial individuals — is rather shocking today, this is not new; it is a long-term, secular trend going back at least to the ’70s. (I do not mean to defend or criticize the behavior of any particular politician). Two of the three most influential papers (at least historically), the New York Times and the Washington Post, are virtually Democratic Party broadsheets. And the news section of the Wall Street Journal leans in the same direction. The orientation of these three papers is followed by the Associated Press and most large papers across the country (such as the Los Angeles Times, Miami Herald, and Boston Globe). Nearly all television — network and cable — is a Democratic Party trumpet. Even the government-supported National Public Radio follows along.”

The call for weakening New York Times v. Sullivan is also emanating from conservatives in the more explicitly political arena. Trump, no stranger to litigation on both sides of the defamation issue, has argued for its overturn. It’s also now part of Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis’ nascent presidential campaign. In a roundtable discussion earlier this month, DeSantis said the ruling served as a shield to protect publications that “smear” officials and candidates. Indeed, the governor has gone further. A bill he proposed that has now been refiled in the Florida legislature would leave the press wide open to lawsuits, including by stating that comments made by anonymous sources would be presumed false in defamation suits.
In other words, if Woodward and Bernstein did not identify “Deep Throat,” or their countless other anonymous sources in Watergate reporting, their stories would have been presumed false under this bill. It would make the effective end of whistleblowers as a tool of investigative reporting. The bill’s sponsor told POLITICO it was also explicitly intended to spur a legal challenge to New York Times v. Sullivan¸ with the goal of overturning it.
None of this is to say that Fox News should escape judgment if its defense team cannot rebut the damaging evidence that is now on the record. But it doesn’t eliminate the need for great caution about the protection the Supreme Court gave the press nearly 60 years ago. In New York Times v. Sullivan, the court took away from public figures the power to bankrupt or intimidate their critics with a storm of litigation. We cannot put that power back in the hands of the powerful again.
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#Opinion #Bigger #Question #Fox #News #Debacle
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

February 24, 2023
Opinion | Joe Biden’s Missed Opportunity to Wrestle With Fox News

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It’s not that Buttigieg is likely to convince large numbers of Fox viewers to become a cheerleader for Biden. It’s rather that on a network where everything from its biggest stars to its graphics offer unremitting hostility to Biden, a calm voice politely but firmly pushing back on that view is the rhetorical equivalent of chicken soup: “couldn’t hurt.” This approach is in sharp contrast to the idea that there is virtually no point in even attempting to persuade; that the way to win is simply to turn to more of your team than the other side.
It’s the kind of thinking that the New York Times’ Amy Chozick wrote up just after Hillary Clinton’s 2016 defeat: “Last year, a prominent group of supporters asked Hillary Clinton to address a prestigious St. Patrick’s Day gathering at the University of Notre Dame, an invitation that previous presidential candidates had jumped on. Barack Obama and Joseph R. Biden Jr. had each addressed the group, and former President Bill Clinton was eager for his wife to attend. But Mrs. Clinton’s campaign refused, explaining to the organizers that white Catholics were not the audience she needed to spend time reaching out to.”
Her campaign was convinced that turning out her core voters — Black people, women, the young, the college educated — was the path to victory. Why bother reaching out to voters disinclined to support her in the first place? (It was an approach, Chozick wrote, that Bill Clinton watched with increasing anxiety). In abandoning any real effort to reach these voters, it ensured that even a marginal decline among her supporters would leave her just vulnerable enough for the “blue wall” of Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan to crumble. Four years later, Biden’s marginal improvement among blue-collar white people was a crucial factor in bringing those states, as well as Georgia, into his column. He wasn’t going to win these constituencies, but he didn’t need to. A slightly better performance among them was enough to turn the tide.
But there’s something more than political calculation at stake here: It’s the idea that if you are asking the country for the most important job of all, you should be willing to do more than speak to a succession of cheering squads. Two politicians of very different outlooks can serve as an example.
In 1980, Ronald Reagan, who began his general election campaign with a speech about “states’ rights” in Neshoba County, Miss., later appeared in a very different venue — in New York. As Reagan biographer Lou Cannon wrote in the Washington Post: “Comparing himself to John F. Kennedy attempting to win Protestant votes in 1960, Ronald Reagan today appealed to Black voters not to consider him ‘a caricature conservative’ who is ‘anti-poor, anti-Black and anti-disadvantaged.’” In his speech to the National Urban League, the GOP presidential nominee also “called for the creation of inner-city ‘enterprise zones’ where taxes would be substantially reduced and regulations relaxed to encourage industry and new jobs.” Later, he went to a vacant lot in the South Bronx — a symbol of urban decay — and engaged in a sometimes confrontational, sometimes civil exchange with residents and activists.
The quick rejoinder to this campaign appearance is that little, if any energy was expended during the Reagan administration in turning these words into deeds. But even if Reagan’s speech fits Voltaire’s quip that “hypocrisy is the tribute that vice pays to virtue,” it was at least a recognition that a potential president owed it to the American people to cross over a normally imposing wall of political separation.
Twelve years earlier, Robert Kennedy made a similar journey. Just days after announcing his candidacy for president, he spoke at the University of Alabama, where five years earlier the Justice Department he led faced down Gov. George Wallace to enforce the racial integration of the school.

Sen. Robert Kennedy waves to an audience of students as as he arrives on stage at the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa on March 22, 1968.
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Horace Cort/AP Photo
“I believe that any who seek high office this year must go before all Americans,” he said, “not just those who agree with him but also those who disagree. Recognizing that it is not just our supporters, not just those who vote for us but all Americans who we must lead in the years ahead. So I have come at the outset of my campaign not to New York, not to Chicago, not to Boston, but here to Alabama.”

Did Kennedy believe that the Alabama delegation would support him at the convention? Of course not. But in making the unlikely visit — and in telling his audience that “racial injustice is a national, not a Southern dilemma” — he was offering a gesture of respect.
In fairness, Bobby may be a special case: He had an appetite for entering the lion’s den: he debated anti-American radicals in Japan and Communist organizers in Brazil, told small-town Midwestern conservatives of the deprivations of inner-city Black people and American college students that he opposed college deferments.
But that instinct would be healthy for our potential leaders — and for the country. Indeed, I sometimes wonder what would happen if more politicians had that kind of willingness to engage. Suppose, for example, Hillary Clinton had wangled an invitation from Tony Perkins to address the Family Research Council, a firm if not zealous center of cultural conservatism, and talked to them about her concept of “family values?” (“I believe in family so strongly that when my own marriage was threatened, my husband and I worked hard to preserve it.”) Would it have changed any votes? Probably not — but it might have convinced some in her audience to see her in less malevolent terms, and might have reminded her that she had once talked with sympathy about those with very different views on issues like abortion.
Of course, meeting with the “other team” runs the risk of angering the most fervent supporters on “your team.” I’ve heard plenty on the left say that even appearing on Fox News gives undeserved respect and legitimacy to a force for evil.
But Pete Buttigieg regularly refutes that view. And I think if Joe Biden had brought the energy and feistiness of his State of the Union address to that Fox interview, he would have given as good as he got, and might even have picked up a handful of new supporters. The way our elections have been going recently, that could make all the difference. And anyway… “couldn’t hurt.”
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#Opinion #Joe #Bidens #Missed #Opportunity #Wrestle #Fox #News
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

February 13, 2023
House GOP opens politicized-government probe with a Fox News-ready lineup

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“I’m deeply concerned about the use of this select subcommittee as a place to settle scores, showcase conspiracy theories and advance an extreme agenda that risks undermining Americans’ faith in our democracy,” said Del. Stacey Plaskett (D-V.I.), her party’s top member on the panel.
Republicans defended their strategy, arguing that whistleblowers — some of whom will testify publicly — have been privately raising concerns to the committee staff. Others have met behind closed doors with the panel, including as recently as this week.
“I have never seen anything like this. Dozens of, dozens of whistleblowers, FBI agents, coming to us … Not Jim Jordan saying this, not Republicans, not conservatives, good, brave FBI agents,” said Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio), chair of the panel and the broader Judiciary Committee.
Yet two of the GOP witnesses who set the tone for the panel’s work are currently employed Fox News contributors with gripes against their onetime organizations to match: former Rep. Tulsi Gabbard, who recently left the Democratic Party, and former FBI agent Nicole Parker.
It’s not just the Fox News contributors who set the panel up to deliver a grievance-fueled message to the party base. The GOP witnesses included two GOP senators — Chuck Grassley of Iowa and Ron Johnson of Wisconsin — as well as constitutional lawyer Jonathan Turley, a favored witness for Republicans in recent years. Another former FBI official, Thomas Baker, testified.
It’s the panel’s first hearing after Speaker Kevin McCarthy agreed to create it last month as he sought to lock down conservative votes and win the gavel. And the broad scope of the hearing — the “weaponization of the federal government,” a mission similar to the panel’s own name — is likely to serve as a springboard into a litany of topics that all fuel outrage on the right, although many of the GOP witnesses are particularly critical of the FBI’s actions dating back to the 2016 presidential campaign.
And the vast scope of the hearing in some ways mirrors the panel’s blurry boundary lines in its relationships with other House investigative work. Many of the 12 Republicans on the subcommittee — including Reps. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.), Matt Gaetz (R-Fla.), Dan Bishop (R-N.C.) and Mike Johnson (R-La.) — have suggested they want to dig into matters that are also being pursued by the wider Judiciary Committee, the Oversight Committee and other panels.
Jordan, who chairs the Judiciary panel and the new subcommittee, wields subpoena power for both panels, making him primarily responsible for sorting out any overlap in jurisdiction. Oversight Chair James Comer (R-Ky.) has stressed his coordination with Jordan, who preceded him as the top Republican there.

Democrats, mindful of the TV-caliber lineup, selected their own camera-friendly witnesses. Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-Md.) — a constitutional lawyer and veteran of recent major Democratic investigations — sat alongside Grassley, Johnson and Gabbard, ready to parry allegations that his party regards as conspiracy theories. And Elliot Williams, a former Obama Justice Department official who now contributes to CNN, took alongside the other witnesses during a second panel.
Raskin warned that the subcommittee “could take oversight over a very dark alley” and that the panel’s name was “pure physiological projection.”
“Not because ‘weaponization of the government’ is its target, but because weaponization of the government is its purpose. What is in a name? Well, everything is here,” Raskin added.
And the White House fired off an opening salvo against the panel ahead of the hearing, calling it a “Fox News reboot of the House Un-American Activities Committee” that “weaponizes Congress to carry out the priorities of extreme MAGA Republicans in Congress.”
In a standard practice for fellow members, Raskin, Johnson, Grassley and Gabbard only give opening statements, sparing them from questions that would force them to go toe-to-toe with their political opponents.
The decision to rely heavily on GOP, or GOP-aligned witnesses, is a sharp-turn from the last prominent select committee — the Jan. 6 panel. That Democratic-run investigation largely relied on Republicans and officials within Trump’s orbit to tell the story of his attempt to overturn the 2020 election, culminating in the violent attack on the Capitol.
Grassley and Johnson discussed, among other matters, their Hunter Biden investigation and their belief that the then-Trump-era FBI worked to undercut their probe of the now-president’s son as the 2020 election drew closer.
“I’ve ran countless investigations. In the past few years, I’ve never seen so much effort from the FBI, the partisan media, and some of my Democratic colleagues to interfere with and undermine very legitimate congressional inquiries,” Grassley said.
The hearing came in the wake of a back-and-forth between Jordan and the Justice Department over his subpoena last week for documents related to certain Biden administration decisions regarding threats against school officials during the pandemic.
The Justice Department, in a letter obtained by POLITICO, told the Ohio Republican that it remained “ready to discuss next steps” on his request for documents and urged him to “reconsider engaging.”
“We are committed to working in good faith to respond to your requests and remain ready to discuss your informational needs and priorities for review and production of pertinent documents,” the department added.
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#House #GOP #opens #politicizedgovernment #probe #Fox #Newsready #lineup
( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

February 9, 2023
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February 4, 2023
‘Fox News in Spanish’: Inside an upstart media company’s big plans to impact the 2024 election

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“We don’t have a Fox News in Spanish, and that’s what Americano intends to be,” said the network’s CEO and founder Ivan Garcia-Hidalgo. He said he has listened to Hispanic Republican leaders lament for 25 years about the need for something like it, but no one ever took serious action.
Garcia-Hidalgo, who worked as a Hispanic surrogate for Donald Trump’s 2020 campaign after a career in telecommunications with Tyco, AT&T and Sprint, said he wants to “blow up” the traditional ways in which conservative Hispanics interact with the media, which he said consisted of going on liberal-leaning networks to “apologize for being Republican, bow your head and take a beating for an hour.”
Americano started with a suite of radio shows out of Miami, where it remains headquartered, but plans to have a presence on television and radio in battleground states across America in the next year, in addition to driving Spanish-speaking audiences to its online and streaming platforms.
To date, Americano Media has raised $18 million from its first three investors, and is set to complete its first and only round of equity investment this spring to generate another $30 to $50 million, Garcia-Hidalgo said. Thomas Woolston, a northern Virginia patent attorney, and Doug Hayden, a San Jose, Calif.-based investor, were the first to provide capital; Americano declined to disclose the third investor.

As a sign of Americano Media’s growth, the network has scored recent interviews with Donald Trump and several top elected Republicans.
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Andrew Harnik/AP Photo
Americano is taking every opportunity it can to build a profile in conservative political circles. The network aired live from CPAC Dallas in August. In December, they set up a massive booth on radio row at Turning Point’s AmericaFest, featuring a “No mas fake news” display that delighted attendees at the Phoenix Convention Center who lingered nearby to watch a cast of conservative celebrities give interviews. As a sign of their growth, the network has scored recent interviews with Trump and several top elected Republicans, including Sens. Marsha Blackburn (Tenn.), Rick Scott (Fla.), Marco Rubio (Fla.) and Mike Lee (Utah), and Reps. Jim Jordan (Ohio), Andy Biggs (Ariz.) and Steve Saclise (La.), along with Texas Gov. Greg Abbott.
Ultimately, however, the Spanish language network’s intended audience isn’t the type of conservative diehards who attend political conferences or tune into Steve Bannon’s “War Room.” It’s working-class Hispanic people living in America, who prefer to speak Spanish, aren’t particularly ideological and who lack options for commentary on the news of the day.
“Hispanics are normies,” said Giancarlo Sopo, a GOP strategist who led the 2020 Trump campaign’s Hispanic marketing efforts.
Strategists behind Americano’s expansion efforts say they believe there is a limit to the GOP’s gains with Latinos in recent years. The low-hanging fruit has already fallen, they say, requiring Republicans to do a bit more work to pick off remaining centrist voters, something Americano intends to do by offering a combination of fairly straight news, mixed with conservative commentary and eventually entertainment offerings.

Democratic operatives, who have long warned that the absence of more robust investments in Spanish media could have boomeranging effects, acknowledge that targeting that type of niche audience could be a highly effective plan.
“There is an information war in Latino and bilingual communities in this country,” said Tara McGowan, the founder and publisher of the Democratic-aligned Courier Newsroom network, who has been vocal about the left needing to build new, progressive media outlets. “It’s a very smart and very alarming move by conservatives to double down on their investment in Americano Media.”
Americano’s venture mirrors that of the liberal Latino Media Network, which in June announced the purchase of 18 Latino radio stations around the country. One of those stations, Miami’s Radio Mambi — a longtime fixture in the conservative Cuban-American community — lost several prominent hosts to Americano Media after the sale was announced. Lourdes Ubieta, Dania Alexandrino and Nelson Rubio are among those who made the switch to Americano. Most of Americano’s hosts, producers, directors and technicians came from Univision, Telemundo and CNN en Español, according to network officials.

Mayra Flores has recently signed a contract to become one of Americano Media’s senior political contributors.
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LM Otero/AP Photo
Mayra Flores, the Republican who flipped a South Texas congressional seat in a June special election, becoming the first female Mexican-born House member, has recently signed a contract to become one of Americano Media’s senior political contributors. Flores lost reelection in November after redistricting made the seat more Democratic.
Other top executives at the startup include Michael Caputo, a longtime GOP operative who advised Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign and briefly served as an official at the Department of Health and Human Services at the start of the Covid pandemic, and Alfonso Aguilar, who led George W. Bush’s citizenship office, is serving as Americano’s political director.
After years of trying to get a news network off the ground and creating a lineup of podcast talk shows, Garcia-Hidalgo launched Americano in March as a partnership with Sirius XM’s Latino variety station. The strategy, he concedes, was not to reach the small number of Latinos listening to satellite radio, but to grab the attention of investors and top radio network executives. Americano pulled its lineup from the satellite channel in October and moved over to a Miami-based Audacy radio station.
The network’s ambitions are broad. By the end of this year, Americano plans to be on 25 radio stations. They’ve added content to every major streaming platform, and have built a digital news website and phone app. They’ve spent several million dollars building studios to launch new television programs, with plans underway to be on cable in every major battleground state ahead of the 2024 election, and in Puerto Rico in the coming weeks, Garcia-Hidalgo said.
“The most underserved news consumer is a center-right Spanish speaker,” Flores said in an interview, noting that many of those fairly conservative Latinos in South Texas have traditionally voted Democratic, though some have begun to leave the party, data show.
While heavy on conservative commentary, Americano does feature liberal guests. On one show, Democrat Jose Artistimuño, a former Democratic National Committee press secretary who worked in Barack Obama’s administration, debates Republican Jimmy Nievez each evening. The network says they’re in the process of adding more Democratic commentators to their roster.
“It’s definitely a space that needed to be filled, and I’m saying that as a Democrat,” Artistimuño said of the lack of Republican-versus-Democrat talk shows in Spanish. “I may not agree with all the policies that Americano supports, but that’s OK. In order for democracy to work, both sides need to talk to each other and debate.”
Latinos in America are still more likely to favor Democrats. But those margins have shrunk dramatically in recent years.
CNN exit poll data in November found that Democrats’ lead with Latino voters has narrowed by nearly 10 percentage points since the 2018 midterm election, with 60 percent supporting House Democratic candidates this fall and 39 percent GOP. Four years ago, 69 percent of the Latino electorate backed Democrats and 29 percent Republicans, the exit polls found.
“The biggest challenge Republicans have had is they usually engage Hispanics from a perspective of electoral politics, just to get their vote, and they usually do it three months before an election,” said Aguilar, Americano’s political director. “It’s very difficult to build confidence in a community when you arrive so late.”
One of the problems still facing Republicans has been reaching Latinos who primarily speak Spanish.
Sopo, whose work includes GOP advertising to Latinos, noted that his firm, Visto Media, conducted a poll for a client this fall that found Democrats held a 40-point lead on the midterm ballot with Hispanics who receive all or most of their news in Spanish. That number fell to a 13-point lead with Hispanics who prefer English news sources.
There are also challenges to successfully capturing an audience of Latino viewers hailing from different countries, Sopo said. Content that appeals to Cubans in Miami isn’t always what Mexicans in Texas are interested in. A mix of culture, news and conservative commentary, Sopo said, is likely a “formula for success with Hispanics,” and something that isn’t widely available.
“If they want to broaden out and grow the tent, the programming has to look more like Fox and less like Newsmax and OAN,” Sopo said, referencing two further-right TV news channels. “Straight news, combined with conservative commentary, and you add some entertainment, which they’ll need for that demographic.”
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( With inputs from : www.politico.com )

January 23, 2023