From WNYC Studios, it's Brian Lair, a daily politics podcast. It's Wednesday, July 20th.

So right-wing disinformation campaigns don't only happen in English. An article in The New Yorker reports that they're targeting Spanish language media in this country, too,

and describes how one new company called the Latino Media Network recently purchased 18 Spanish

language radio stations across the country in an effort to fight disinformation campaigns and help Spanish-speaking

Americans make sense of the news. Joining me now to talk about what this means for Spanish

speakers in this country and U.S. politics and journalism more broadly is Grasiela

Mikovsky. She's a contributing writer for the New Yorker, and her recent article in the

magazine is titled, A Different Kind of Bid to Win Over the Spanish Language Media Audience. We'll also talk

about her new role as dean of the Craig Newmark Graduate School of Journalism at CUNY.

Welcome to the show, Dean Murchowski, and congratulations on your appointment at,

let me say, the school that produces so many of our best WNYC and Brian Laird Show employees.

Thank you. Good morning.

And before we get into Spanish language, media, and democracy and disinformation, the content of that,

I want to start by asking you a language question, and that is about the word Latinx.

You use it in the subhead of the New Yorker article.

A new company has acquired 18 Spanish language radio stations serving 10 of the largest Latinx populated cities in the country.

But you also cited in a 2020 article for the New Yorker that only 3% of Latinx people use that

term.

And I will say we already got one email from a listener who I don't know their background, so I can't say Latinx or not,

saying like elitist using Latinx. So is it becoming a more widely accepted gender neutral term

in the community? And why do you use it in the subhead of the article or use it in general?

Yes, so I use it in general, and it has become weaponized by, mostly by conservative groups

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