Soros-backed group buys Spanish radio stations with US$60m

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A group tied to leftist billionaire George Soros has shelled out $60 million for 18 Spanish-language radio stations across 10 US cities. The newly acquired stations will now form the Latino Media Network and will be led by former Obama staffer Stephanie Valencia, National File reported on June 8.

The network stated it has secured financing from “leading Latino investors” as well as Lakestar Finance, an investment group associated with Soros.

So why would a Soros-tied group be buying up Spanish-language radio stations?

Could it be because the befuddled leader of the Democrat Party has just a 24 percent approval rating among Hispanic Americans?

A new Quinnipiac poll shows that nearly 6-in-10 Hispanic Americans disapprove of Joe Biden.

“The poll indicates that Biden’s approval rating, broken down by racial groups, is the lowest among Hispanic Americans”, Breitbart’s John Binder noted.

In their infinite wisdom, many Democrats and their media allies continue to insist that the mumbling, bumbling Biden has such low approval ratings not because of his team’s policies but because of “misinformation”.

To counter that perception, the move by leftists tied to Soros to snatch up Spanish-language radio stations is not surprising, analysts say.

One of the stations included in the deal is Radio Mambi, a conservative talk radio station in Miami that Democrats have long accused of spreading

“misinformation” among Hispanic communities, according to The Washington Examiner. Radio Mambi has long been known as a staunch anti-communist network, particularly among Cuban exiles.

The newly Soros-acquired AM and FM radio stations are located in 10 of the country’s largest Latino markets, including Miami, New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas, San Francisco, Houston and Las Vegas.

“Latinos are constantly trying to navigate the ocean of information. In some cases that is disinformation, in some cases that is very one-sided communication”, Valencia said in a statement.

The sales must still meet Federal Communications Commission (FCC) approval before Latino Media Network can fully operate the stations. That process could last well into 2023, Florida’s WLRN reported.

That gives them some time before the 2024 election to battle that dreaded “misinformation” that plagues Biden — or whoever the Democrats choose to run.

Meanwhile, a pro-left group named ‘Check My Ads’, which is led by an Indian-American named Nandini Jammi, after causing huge damage to Breitbart is now all set with new mission against Fox News. In her latest tweet, this fanatic activist of the Democratic Party wrote: “Five years ago, I co-founded the campaign to make Breitbart unprofitable. They lost 90% of their ad revenues in 3 months. Today, we’re launching the campaign to take on Fox News — and we know exactly how to get the job done”.

According to media reports, this nonprofit aiming to defund disinformation online that has taken money out of the pockets of several prominent far-right websites now has its sights set on its most formidable target yet: Fox News.

The group, Check My Ads, is hoping the success it has had in stripping advertising dollars from right-wing provocateurs including Steve Bannon, Glenn Beck and Dan Bongino will give it momentum as it attempts to confront a powerful media empire.

Former marketer Claire Atkin, who co-founded Check My Ads, argues that Fox “encouraged and supported” the attack on the Capitol.

“Advertisers have said over and over again, ‘We don’t want to fund violence,’ so it’s shocking that Fox News is still receiving these ad dollars”, she said.

Mikel Ellcessor, the group’s chief operating officer, points to Fox News star Tucker Carlson’s sympathetic portrayal of the Capitol rioters and Carlson’s documentary series “Patriot Purge,” which promoted conspiracy theories about January 6, falsely suggesting the violence was instigated by left-wing activists and calling the rioters “political prisoners”.

“What happens on Fox News television helps fund all of their digital properties,” he said. “You don’t get to claim that your hands are free and clean when you put a dollar into the Fox News operation”.

In a statement, Fox News dismissed the campaign as an effort at censorship, saying “There’s no greater threat to democracy than the effort to silence free speech”.

The network said it takes pride in “featuring more dissenting viewpoints on the major issues facing the country than our cable news competitors”.

The push by the left-leaning activists comes amid growing calls from online advertising watchers for there to be more transparency and accountability in the complex industry that is digital advertising, an ever-growing segment of the economy in which an estimated US$521 billion was spent last year.

Instead of calling for a consumer boycott, Check My Ads took a newer approach: apply public pressure on the hidden engines of the online advertising world: ad exchanges.

The exchanges, operated by companies like Google and Verizon but also a collection of smaller firms, are kind of the middlemen between a company trying to place an ad and a website.

Often the exchanges have content rules that say they will not place ads on sites that promotes the overthrow of the government or glorifies violence.

When the group pointed out to exchanges that some sites they are doing business with violate their own rules, the exchanges acted. An exchange called Freewheel dropped Steve Bannon’s Real America’s Voice; another exchange called OpenX blocked Glenn Beck’s the Blaze; Google severed ties with Dan Bongino’s website. In all, the group estimates that the campaign has cut off millions of dollars from sites spreading disinformation.

“Ad exchanges have set a line, they set a standard for how their publishers should operate. We are just saying, ‘You need to uphold your own standard,’” said Atkin, who says her group is going after the “ATM of the disinformation economy”.

According to information, websites peddling disinformation generate more than US$2 billion in advertising revenue each year, according to an analysis by NewsGuard and ComScore.

Check My Ads says their goal is not just to take that money out of circulation, but to shed new light on just how the shadowy world of online advertising operates.

Some 90 percent of online ads are generated through an automated process, as opposed to being directly placed by a company.

Industry insiders call this system “programmatic advertising”, which basically means it is automated by computer software, according to Joshua Lowcock, an executive at the marketing and media agency UM.

“It’s like a stock exchange,” Lowcock said. “When you visit a website, there are multiple advertisers bidding on you in a real-time auction”.

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