The World Economic Forum's 2024 Global Risks Report concluded that the greatest short-term risks to humanity are misinformation and disinformation. To combat these threats, the Damon J. Keith Center for Civil Rights at Wayne State University Law School has produced a first-of-its-kind AI-powered tool to combat the alarming surge of disinformation on foreign-language radio stations across the U.S.

“We may be the first and only civil rights center in the country that has actually invested in developing new technology to advance civil rights by fighting misinformation and disinformation,” Peter Hammer, professor of law, A. Alfred Taubman endowed chair and director of the center, said.

VERDAD, which stands for Verifying and Exposing Radio Disinformation and Discourse and is Spanish for “truth,” is led by Detroit-based journalist and Damon J. Keith Journalism Fellow Martina Guzmán.

In 2022, Guzmán received a tip from a credible source that Russian propagandists were buying airtime on Spanish-language radio stations to spread misinformation in the runup to the 2024 U.S. presidential election. Guzmán’s interviews with experts across the country confirmed the tip.

As an award-winning journalist and member of the Latino community, Guzmán said she was compelled to act.

“If you step into any Latino household or restaurant kitchen or walk by a construction site, you will likely hear a Spanish-language radio station playing in the background,” Guzmán said. “About 97% of Latinos tune in to the radio each week, a rate higher than the national average.” This makes Spanish-language radio, a trusted source of information in the Latino community, vulnerable to exploitation.

She also spoke with organizations in key voting states that hired and recruited volunteers to listen to the radio and flag potential mis- and disinformation. While the FCC states it is “illegal for broadcasters to intentionally distort the news,” it relies on listener reports of supposed violations to spur investigation.

“There had to be a better way to monitor radio stations outside of physically listening for hours,” Guzmán said.

Guzmán contacted Public Data Works, a software engineering and design shop that had worked with news organizations like Detroit-based Outlier Media to build digital tools in support of representative democracy. Together, they built VERDAD with support from MacArthur Foundation, the Reynolds Journalism Institute and the Knight Election Hub.

“We decided to provide support for [Guzmán’s] project as part of a small cluster of grants supporting time-limited, urgent actions that responded to the targeted and malicious attempts to misinform and misguide Americans in the lead up to the fall 2024 elections,” Kathy Im, director of journalism and media at MacArthur Foundation, said. “The goal of the [MacArthur Foundation’s] Journalism and Media program is to strengthen U.S. democracy by supporting accurate, just and inclusive news and narratives that inform, engage and activate Americans to build a more equitable future. We believed this tool would be an important resource and intervention in addressing efforts to discourage participation in democratic processes.”

“I think if we learned anything this last election, it’s that the media space has completely changed,” Hammer said. “If we are going to be effective in fighting for democracy and civil rights, we must be far more thoughtful and ambitious about the range of tools, techniques and strategies we're willing to advance to make sure democracy doesn't die behind closed doors or through misinformation.”

Guzmán and Public Data Works launched the website VERDAD.app in November 2024. In its first five weeks in operation, the open-source project recorded 40 Spanish language radio stations in key battleground states and areas with large Latino populations. By priming the AI with keywords from cultural flashpoints like immigration, abortion, LGBTQ+, reproductive rights and more, VERDAD captures clips and flags them for independent verification — a much quicker process than active human listening.

It didn’t take VERDAD long to find examples. It captured a clip from WWFE-AM in Florida suggesting Planned Parenthood’s goal is to decrease the African American population.

“We’ve found that much of this disinformation aligns with known Russian propaganda being pushed on Sputnik Radio,” the Russian state media outlet, Guzmán said.

Public Data Works and Guzmán have expanded VERDAD’s capabilities since its launch. The technology now scans other non-English-speaking outlets, including Arabic and Haitian French Creole. It also has a Spanish-language interface and even crowdsources feedback on clips so journalists can give a thumbs-up when they find dis/misinformation or a thumbs-down when it flags something benign.

With further philanthropic support, Guzmán says they hope to further develop VERDAD’s features by adding more languages and crowdsourcing more information from journalists around the world. While the project launched with the help of foundations, Guzmán said additional support would help add more language capabilities and allow her to conduct more academic research and investigative journalism from her findings.

“Being in a space like the Keith Center, where democracy is the focus and I feel supported, allows me to think outside the box in ways I don’t think I could anywhere else,” Guzmán said. You can support the Keith Center by making a gift online. For more information or for larger gifts, contact Rob MacGregor at 313-577-4141 or rmacgregor@wayne.edu.