>> This is a production of Wedu, PBS Tampa, Saint Petersburg, Sarasota.

>> It was a missile.

And that missile, and there's a small plane, it hit it and it just disintegrated.

I mean, just blew it to pieces.

>> Coming up, Florida this week comes full circle on a historic indictment.

The U.S.

charges Raul Castro with murder in the 1996 shootdown of four men over the Florida Straits.

The chaos, the coverage 30 years ago.

And this reporter was there.

Also, Florida is on the map for the FIFA World Cup.

And for the first time in history, the most expansive broadcast coverage in any language will be in Spanish.

A Florida Tribe investigation exposes a South Florida news outlet run by reporters who don't exist.

Poynter's PolitiFact prepares for the Florida primaries in August.

How is fact checking done in real time and in Tampa Bay.

Who owns your local news?

The answer may be changing.

Welcome back everybody.

I'm your moderator, Lisette Campos.

Joining us today is Ray Roa, the co-owner and editor in chief of Creative Loafing Tampa Bay.

It's a more than 30 year old print and digital publication and now locally owned.

Tom Martinez is the co-owner and CEO of Soul Mart Media, with more than three decades in Spanish language radio.

His career has taken him from Chicago to Miami to Sarasota, and Katie Sanders is the editor in chief of PolitiFact at the Poynter Institute for Media Studies.

She oversees the Pulitzer Prize winning, fact checking newsroom and its website.

And joining us a little later in the broadcast is José Cancela.

He is the president of the Telemundo Station Group.

He oversees 33 Telemundo media outlets across the U.S.

and Puerto Rico.

This week, the United States indicted the man who once ruled Cuba, Raul Castro, indicting him for murder.

To understand why this moment matters, first I want to take you back 30 years.

It's February 24th, 1996.

Cuban MiGs have just shot down two unarmed planes over international waters in the Florida Straits.

Four men are dead, and 48 hours later, I am on a plane to Havana under cover.

Armed with a small home video camera and a tourist cover story, my cameraman and I spent four days on the ground in Havana.

It was a city gripped by fear.

Castro informants on every corner on the streets.

Cubans who could only whisper their grief.

>> Be careful.

At any moment this whole place could blow.

People are so upset.

But we're all afraid to talk right now.

>> The Cuban government tried to stop this broadcast from ever airing.

They failed.

And now, 30 years later, it appears that Raul Castro has as well.

>> We are announcing an indictment charging Raul Castro and several others with conspiracy to kill U.S.

nationals.

>> Wednesday.

In Miami, Acting Attorney General Todd Blanch announced an indictment and arrest warrant for Castro, handing down four counts of murder, conspiracy to kill U.S.

nationals and destruction of aircraft.

Castro and five others, including the pilots who fired the missiles, now face federal charges.

>> We are happy to have this justice coming to reality.

>> Outside the Freedom Tower and at Versailles restaurant in Little Havana.

Tears, chants and a hope.

30 years in the making and this story is personal.

In the region, nearly 179,000 Cubans call Hillsborough, Pinellas, Pasco and Polk counties home.

It is the second largest Cuban community in the nation outside Miami-Dade.

Tampa's Cuban roots run from the cigar workers of Ybor City to the families who fled the revolution and never stopped watching the streets.

For them and for the families of Carlos Costa, Armando Alejandre, Mario de la Pena and Pablo Morales.

Today may not be just a legal development.

It seems like 30 years of waiting finally answered.

I covered this story at its beginning in my late 20s.

I was working at the CBS station in South Florida, and our panel today is here to help us understand what it means now and what comes next.

Tom, I'd like to start by asking you about the feelings within the Cuban community.

>> Well, first of all, it was joy.

Second of all, I think it was sadness.

Sadness that we had to wait 30 years for this to happen.

We did some coverage at the radio station the day.

I mean, the other day, and we had two responses, one from a regional rival from Cuba and then from my wife, who's been here for quite a number of years.

And they both coincided in having tears in their eyes because they realized that after all these many years, there's going to be some justice.

Now, whether that's going to happen or not, we'll see.

But definitely one of the things that they expressed was the songs that they would play when this happened.

One was Willy Chirino El Dia Llegando.

That's right.

>> Other one?

>> Yes.

And the other one was the regional rival was Carlos Varela.

Una foto de familia.

So it's interesting to say that music came to mind during this important event.

>> Well, Rey, for you for you all in Creative Loafing, Tampa Bay, you're going to cover this story.

Of course, the Cuban community is very big here in Tampa Bay.

But there is diversity of thought even within the Cuban community.

How do you tackle that?

>> Sure.

I mean, and I'll be the first to admit that I think Creative Loafing used to do a very good job of covering Cuba.

We're on top of that.

We've kind of fallen short on that.

But I also think we're not alone in that.

I can't understand the Spanish broadcast yet, so I wasn't listening.

But I certainly think that in most of the English speaking media, we've failed to cover these 179,000 Cubans in the Bay area the way they should be.

We treat them as a monolithic political bloc when it's a diverse view of views in that community.

We love Cuban food.

We love Cuban cigars.

Miami will take offense to this, but a lot of people in Tampa feel closer to Cuba than anywhere else in the US, right?

But yet we talk about them from a very singular point of view.

And we don't talk about enough of those dissenting voices and some of that diversity.

No one's trying to excuse the repressive nature of the Cuban regime and the surveillance state that it is.

But I think we can do better in treating the Cuban population in a more diverse way, in preventing them such.

>> Katie.

Where do we go from here in terms of the media and fact checking and explain that.

>> It's a really bold move that the administration has undertaken and the consequences are unknown.

So I can't tell you that.

And it's incredible to see you report on this story, having been there at the beginning.

I'm really enjoying that.

Um, but I think what we're seeing is that familiar information vacuum online where the public is eager to know where the story is going to go from here.

Well, Castro surrender, will the U.S.

be forceful militarily?

Are we going to see a repeat of what happened in Venezuela with Maduro?

How is it going to play out?

But in the vacuum, you're seeing a lot of false narratives emerge online, a lot of confusion, a lot of that familiar kind of AI slop or just, you know, made up narratives about a military invasion already underway, or he's already surrendered.

So you just have to be really patient and really careful as a viewer, as a, as a, as a citizen, as a stakeholder, and see and then pay close attention to what officials are saying.

That's what organizations like PolitiFact will be doing, is seeing whether what they're saying about the situation really matches the reality.

>> Thank you for your perspectives.

We're going to move on to our next topic.

Florida is on the map for the world's biggest sporting event.

Miami is one of 11 U.S.

cities hosting FIFA World Cup matches this year.

It leads all the venues with a record seven games at hard Rock Stadium.

The tournament runs June the 11th through July the 19th, and the economic impact in South Florida alone is projected to be 1.3 billion with a B billion dollars this year.

Telemundo makes history as well.

More than 700 hours of coverage will make it the most expensive World Cup broadcast ever in any language.

The potential viewership in Tampa Bay as well will be significant.

More than 1 in 5 residents in our region identify as Hispanic or Latino.

And no one is better positioned to explain what this moment means than the president of the Telemundo Station Group.

We welcome José Cancela.

He oversees more than 30 Telemundo media outlets in the U.S.

and Puerto Rico, and he is also the author of The Power of Business in Espanol.

Welcome to Florida this week, Jose.

>> Hello.

How are you?

It's great to be here with you and and congratulations on all your success.

I still remember you as a young reporter back in the day on channel 23 here in Miami.

So really, it's so, so special to be here with you today.

>> Thank you so much.

Tell us about what this message is for, about the prominence of Spanish language media in the U.S.

having such a pivotal role for the World Cup?

>> I we truly believe that this World Cup is going to surpass each and every ratings of the last World Cups, and strictly has to do with the fact that games are going to be in prime time here.

The excitement of hosting here in the United States.

It's been a couple of decades since the the tournament was held here, and the excitement is being felt all across the country.

Uh, as there's eight of our stations, our host cities.

And I can tell you that each and every one of them, including South Florida, the excitement is reaching a fever pitch not only from our Latino audience, but our our non Spanish speaking audience.

We believe that the narration in Spanish just carries an extra sensibility to it that you want to watch it in Espanol.

>> And hear the announcers say goal the way they say it, and they stretch it into so many seconds.

You know, one of the things that has surprised so many people is to hear that this coverage in Spanish will break the record of broadcasting hours of the FIFA World Cup.

When you think that China, Brazil, Indonesia, India all have at least 100 million more fans than Mexico, which is the largest, um, you know, super fan audience for that speaks Spanish of FIFA.

Um, why Spanish and why now?

>> Yeah.

Look, we believe that, that we need to have that, that amount of coverage because you're not in your homeland and you're watching from, from away.

And the, the intent here is to those matches that, that take you to your homeland that are coverage give you that that that feeling of empathy, like if you were sitting back home.

And so hence we're going to have more hours of coverage because we want to cover it from, from both sides.

And, and the reality is that this tournament now is large.

It's the largest World Cup, right.

This is an expanded version of the World Cup.

So there's going to be more more hours just by definition of the fact that there are much many more games for this World Cup.

>> What legacy when you view this looking ahead, what legacy effect might this have on broadcasting in general in the US when it comes to the relationship that they have with the Hispanic consumer in the US?

I mean, beyond sports?

>> Yeah for sure.

One of the things that that we'll see coming out of this World Cup is the fact that the Latino community is is vibrant as ever.

And that Spanish language television, which for the most part is here to stay.

But there's still naysayers out there, believe it or not.

This should categorically close the door on any discussion.

If Spanish language media is a viable enterprise.

You know, 4 or 5, six generations removed from their homeland.

The ratings for this, I have no doubt will will clear make the case that Spanish language media is is here to stay.

>> Thank you.

That was Jose Cancela, the president of the Telemundo Station Group.

And moving on to our next talked about story.

A brazen scam is shaking public trust.

It's all linked to a South Florida news outlet operating with a staff created almost entirely by artificial intelligence.

The South Florida Standard featured fake reporters, even AI generated headshots, and a fictional editor in chief.

The stories were lifted from real news outlets.

They were run through AI and republished as original.

Investigators traced the site to a Philadelphia company whose founder pleaded guilty to investor fraud.

Two more ghost news sites were also uncovered in Charleston and San Francisco.

The Florida Tribune broke this story with NPR member station Kcrw during its Question Everything podcast.

Katie, I'd like to start with you.

This kind of deception hits at the heart of the public trust.

And how does something like this land in a media landscape that's already embattled?

>> The only good thing about this story is that the ploy to pass off fake news as real news didn't really work.

It wasn't.

It was designed to really bury the reputations of people involved.

Right.

And, um, when you learn more about the person who's at the center of this kind of AI ring, um, you, you start to see a lot of, a lot of the intention is to, you know, do reputational repair right online.

So I think the only thing I read that thought was good news was that it didn't work.

The rest of it's really bad.

And you hit on some really key words that are very troubling.

Public trust.

This is not how journalism foundations are made.

You know, this is this is not ethical.

This is not I think part of the plan was to sell off the brand based on based on this kind of bedrock of lies.

I don't know how you do.

>> That, really, to increase the search engine optimization of their clients so that the information that would come up would be in a more positive light.

Ray, I saw you shaking your head when I was reading this story.

What goes through your mind?

>> I think about AI all the time.

I think journalists should be aware of AI, perhaps experiment with it.

I don't think they should write stories with it.

But at the end of the day, as Katie pointed out, I think the only outlets that should be worried about AI replacing anything are the ones that do regurgitate press releases, right?

They skip tough questions.

They skip critical thinking.

They trade truth for access because you can't teach things like curiosity or conviction.

And an AI will never be able to do that.

Now, that said, human journalists, human powered news orgs have to do more.

I know it's hard for journalists.

We have to work harder to meet people, create trust, be on shows like this.

I mean, we're real flesh and blood people right here and teach people the difference between.

I'm so glad you said slop because that allows me to say slop, AI, slop, and the real thing.

>> And this is not limited to the English language.

I mean, even Spanish language media is also being targeted by by AI and some of these fake stories.

Um, Tom, how do you weigh in on this?

Well.

>> Let me tell you, we have heard of announcers in Spanish that can do different, uh, you know, accents and we could have access to them and we could put them on the air and they could get the weather and they could get the traffic and everything, which is amazing, but at the same time, they don't have the human touch.

They don't have the heart of our community.

So we're totally against that.

You know, we don't we're not considering that one bit.

On the other side, you know, we use AI sometimes to review some of the commercials that we do.

And that has been helpful.

But in general, you know, it's it's kind of scary.

>> Yeah.

It is, it is for, for the audience.

Why should they care?

I mean, this is something that they know the journalist would be very weary of because it affects jobs.

It affects the relationship that we have with the audience.

But for the general audience, explain to them, why should they care about this?

>> They think that they're good at telling what's real and what's not.

And I have to say, you're not.

This these websites were sophisticated.

They had authors with pictures, authors with bios.

They had an about page.

They had a transparency page.

They had all of the signals of something that should be taken as trustworthy, but it was not.

And I think people don't understand, don't understand how much effort they have to put forth to decipher what's real and what's not, because there are not enough safeguards to do that for them.

You have to go in background, as these reporters did.

Every person on the page do pretty significant background checks to figure out, oh, they had these issues in the past.

And then, you know, do, do back end code work to figure out what it had in common with other sites.

So it's too it's too much to expect, but that's where we are.

>> So before we go on to the next segment, I do want to ask you, you know, we've talked about the fact that AI, you know, and these fake newsrooms, right?

This is not illegal, but there have been steps that have been taken to make sure that AI is not used in political campaigns.

Can you talk to us about that?

>> Um, it seems like AI is being used in a lot of political campaigns.

We just fact checked a video of Florida gubernatorial candidate Byron Donalds last week, where he was giving an interview recently about something else.

I think talking about his upbringing, his family, and someone just decided to make it look like he was talking about insider trading and how he was really cool with it because he wants to get rich.

That did not happen.

I need to say that in the same breath, we rated that fact check pants on fire.

But these videos, it wasn't even an official campaign video.

It's just more slop that's put on social media to erode trust and individuals and candidates.

And it's really confusing and convincing.

>> You're coming up on a very busy season, political season for the Florida primaries.

How do you check the facts in real time when you're having, you know, press conferences, you're having debates happen?

How how do you do that?

>> Well, we have to prioritize.

We have a staff of about 20 people at PolitiFact, but one fact checking reporter who's tasked with Florida.

So she's going to be really busy, but she has a big team behind her.

But we fact check the candidates primarily for the governor's race and U.S.

Senate along the way so that when they have their debates, we can do live fact checking in real time.

We, um, so as candidates are making attacks at each other on the stage, we're really familiar with their talking points before we get to that point.

So we can tell people quickly, that's half true.

That's false.

That's misleading.

That's that's actually right.

Yeah.

We'll see how many of those we get.

>> So we're going to pivot from fake AI newsrooms to the changing media landscape right here in Tampa Bay.

Nexstar has acquired Tegna, putting WFLA and ten Tampa Bay news under common ownership.

While the FCC quickly okayed the deal back in March.

A federal judge put it on hold for review.

Meanwhile, in a different approach, employees at Creative Loafing Tampa Bay bought their own paper.

It's now back under local ownership for the first time in 18 years.

Rea Creative Loafing has launched something called the Tampa Bay Journalism Project, which is the first major project now that you all own it.

Explain to our viewers what that is and why that's so important to the local news market.

>> Yeah, it's important to talk about.

I'm glad we're pivoting from the AI thing because news and information to us shouldn't be a commodity, right?

When we talk about journalism, we have all these pull quotes and data points about how it supports democracy, and we spout all these things and we put our hand out and we ask people to pay for it, right?

But people every day are asking, they're making calculations about what can I feed my family?

What can I not feed my family?

AM I going to have rent?

What medicine can I afford to take?

Why are we asking them to make a similar calculation when it comes to information, whether it's news about who to vote for and why, or news about what a parent can do with an extra $100 that they found in the budget.

Something fun for their family, for us.

Listen, journalism is expensive to produce, right?

But for us, we do not want somebody who's sought out that information and found it to be hit with a paywall when they get there.

So and AI stuff, when trustworthy, brave reporting is, is, is put behind a paywall.

To me, that opens the door for AI generated stuff for slop like that for influencers chasing clout instead of working for the public.

Good, right?

So that's why we bought this paper.

We started this project.

This project is a coalition of non paywalled community websites.

We share our content with each other and our readers for free, all free to repackage it.

Modeled after the state's newsroom project that Mitch Perry works on now the Florida Phoenix.

A great thing there.

So now that we've bought it, every dollar that comes into us via our donors or our advertisers stays here.

Right?

Every owner has an address here.

We only have three employees now.

We have four co-owners that are employees, three that aren't.

And it all stays here and well, congratulations.

So that's that's what we're doing.

>> We look forward to watching all of the growth and the development.

And now it's time for our big stories of the week when we highlight issues that our panelists know best and that our viewers may want to know more about.

Katie, I'd like to start with you and what's going on at the University of Florida.

>> Well, I want to know a lot more about this UF presidential search drama.

So UF has released a sole finalist through a pretty secretive process.

The former president of the University of Alabama.

He has the blessing of DeSantis.

But Senator Rick Scott put out a scathing statement about the process, calling it secretive, calling out a payout for the interim president UF, raising a lot of questions about the attorney general's role at UF.

So as a political editor, political reporter, I'm watching this and very interested in what's going to happen and how fact checking can come in.

>> Ray, what's your big story?

>> You know, let's talk about AI made me think about the pope.

He's due to issue a big statement about AI, and I'm excited to read what that is.

But locally, obviously the race.

But on Tuesday, the BLK, the Burial Latino Commission is going to meet in Ybor City.

And I do believe the Live Nation venue that's proposed there, 4500 cap will come up.

So I'm interested to see what the bloc thinks, what the community is going to say about this project, especially as Tom, the George owner of crowbar, was just on Capitol Hill.

>> And Tom, what's your big story?

>> We have a couple.

Immigration has not gone away.

That continues to be our focus from a local perspective as well as a national one.

And without a doubt, the World Cup.

Everybody's talking about it, everybody's excited.

So those are a couple of stories that are being covered by our.

>> That your 1.5 million listeners across the Tampa Bay West Central Florida area can expect to hear.

>> Oh, absolutely.

And the interesting thing is that people, for example, don't think that Cubans are into the World Cup.

Well, they are.

I mean, living in Miami for for many years, every time the World Cup came around, they were the biggest fans.

And and so are the rest of Latin Americans.

I mean, Cancela said it you know, that's part of our heritage.

>> I mean, even Ray, you talked about the draw for the non-Spanish speaker of the tone and the excitement and just the different cultural coverage that is provided by the Spanish coverage of sports.

>> Yeah.

I'll be at Cinco soccer watching as many of the 160 games that they're going to broadcast because it is a hub for the Latino community in town, and to watch those games with people and experience it in their language is like, I love living in Florida for those reasons.

>> Ben and Katie, we certainly hope to have you back.

This is going to be a very busy season, political season, the Florida primaries, as well as some other important primaries that you all will be following in the rest of the country.

Right?

>> Oh, yes.

We are prioritizing other states in addition to Florida.

And I'd love to come back as things really heat up and tell you what's what.

>> Awesome.

Well, thank you so much for your time.

As always, we want to thank our panelists Ray Roa, Tom Martinez, Katie Sanders, and José Cancela.

Before we go, the indictment of Raul Castro is a story that resonates deeply in the Spanish language media world.

We asked Telemundo President José Cancela for his reaction, and his answer is one that you won't want to miss.

>> If things fall into place where there is a more sense of, of, of democracy in Cuba that we there would be bureaus that would open there.

>> And that bonus content is available exclusively on our website at ww.org.

On behalf of the entire team here at WEDU.

Thank you so much for watching.

We know you have plenty of choices for your news and information, so we thank you for choosing us.