Recording from a clandestine studio in the Bronx, radio operator Andy Aracena welcomes Dr. Victor Garrido to his show for the first installment of what will become a weekly consultation invaluable in helping his listeners survive the COVID-19 pandemic. Garrido, who in 2003 became the first surgeon to perform a liver transplant in the Dominican Republic, joins Aracena on the phone from both men’s home country in the Caribbean. 

“[Dr. Garrido] will be talking about the realities of this disease affecting Dominicans with precise, real data — distinct from the lies that Dominican authorities have spread throughout the media,” Aracena says to his listeners in Spanish. His tone is a striking departure from the vivacity he usually radiates throughout the rest of his programming on “Música de mi Tierra,” in which he maneuvers between bumping impossibly rhythmic merengue, relaying brief news updates and bantering with callers.  

“Every Thursday we’ll be discussing health, politics and various topics of interest not only for Dominicans living in New York, but also very much for those in Santo Domingo,” he says. It’s June 2020 and, although New York is entering the first stage of the re-opening process, Latinx communities continue to be disproportionately affected by the pandemic. They listen in to 89.3 FM Digital New York to hear comfort music and news direct from their homeland, where cases are quickly climbing alongside media and government misinformation. Doing their best to dispel myths endangering people in both countries and stressing the importance of acknowledging how little is actually known about the disease, the two men have a forthright scientific conversation in the name of public health.

 “It’s important that we clarify for our Dominican audience and everyone listening in New York that this disease is new and every treatment the medical community explores is an experiment,” Garrido says, explaining why there have been safety guidelines and treatments issued and later retracted, causing people to become skeptical of scientific research. “There are diseases that we’ve known about for years, centuries even, for which we change methods of treating even today if science indicates it’s necessary.”

For example, Garrido mentions the turbulence of opinion surrounding the healing effects of hydroxychloroquine, a drug normally used to treat malaria. Because curative trials require evaluating people who are already sick, it’s exceptionally difficult to be certain of whether a patient gets better or worse due to the treatment. Nonetheless, very early preliminary findings of hydroxychloroquine’s efficacy were politicized by leaders like President Donald Trump as a definitive cure. When studies evolved from showing the drug as a potentially useful treatment to a harmful one and eventually simply ineffective, it was already too late. Trump’s lack of humility toward evolving medical opinions made it difficult to reach people with scientific facts. Even worse, Dominican President Danilo Medina spread myths before the disease arrived in his country that the sun would stop the spread and that Dominicans drank enough alcohol to kill the virus. This likely discouraged people from taking the correct preventative measures early on.

With the weight of intellectual humility behind him, Garrido tells listeners the steps he is confident they can take to remain safe. “We know with high scientific certainty that hand washing, wearing masks and social distancing are fundamental preventative measures to avoid getting sick,” he says. “The most unwavering treatment we currently have against the virus is simply to not contract it, and we are certain those methods will greatly reduce those chances.”

This conversation is paramount in curbing distrust of science and keeping listeners safe. And yet it could cost Aracena and his station millions of dollars.

Although Aracena’s station explicitly says its broadcasts are only available to stream through legal digital means and has dropped the “89.3” from its name on social media, programming like this continues to illegally pop up on radio frequencies that have been designated vacant by the Federal Communications Commission. In March 2019, the FCC presented one of the station’s hosts with an official warning stating that an unlicensed station operating on the frequency 89.3 in the Bronx had been traced to him. Per the notice, if he failed to stop broadcasting without a license immediately, further violations could result in “severe penalties.” More recently, according to FCC documents obtained through a public records request, a complaint was filed in October 2020 about an unlicensed station operating on that same frequency in the Bronx, although it did not mention FM Digital New York or any of its hosts.

Although most stations claim that unaffiliated fans are responsible for re-broadcasting their content on the airwaves, whoever is doing so without a license granted by the FCC could be subject to major fines as pirate transmitters if their equipment is found — regardless of any positive impact their messaging has. Just last January, the adoption of the PIRATE Act increased previous penalties tenfold, bringing the maximum fine to $2 million and making anti-pirate enforcement a priority for the FCC. From January 2017 to June 2020, the FCC has collected $945,520 worth of fines and has proposed another $1,556,745. The actual amount they collect will come down to each pirate’s case and whether they reach a settlement with the commission or are issued a forfeiture order.

 The factor most frequently cited against pirate radio by the FCC and those who supported the PIRATE Act is that it poses a public safety risk by possibly interfering with crucial messaging. “These illegal actors not only hurt our economy, but they can prevent people from receiving important emergency information during a crisis,” U.S. Rep. Gus Bilirakis said in a 2019 press release. “This bill will give teeth to enforcement of illegal radio operators by hitting them in their pocketbook and better stop these illegal actors for good.”

But in cases like that of FM Digital New York, the pandemic has shown that stations that have good reputations in their community and know how to reach them based on their needs could be major safety assets during times of crisis. If done properly, for example, a station could forge trust between their audience in the scientific community. Conversely, the FCC interfering with reliable health messaging in communities that have higher rates of coronavirus infection is a safety risk in itself.

Policy and media expert Larisa Kingston Mann explained that the Emergency Broadcast System is used in national emergencies, but during regional disasters, community radios are allowed to exist to inform the public. “Having one giant owner of all the radio stations where they have the same content everywhere is actually not great for emergency services of other kinds because they're not actually local,” she said. “They don’t know what's happening on the ground, and they don't speak the languages.”

 Ultimately, at the heart of the COVID-19 pandemic is a multilingual communication crisis.

It starts with a lack of basic health messaging that evolves into a significant news and information gap. Hospitalization, for someone who doesn’t speak a majority language, means a torturous experience of not being heard and not being given the education others do upon discharge. Understandably, although troublingly, each experience is more reason for them to distrust government officials, reporters and health experts who consistently abandon them and their community in the margins.

People who have trouble communicating in English experience COVID-19 incidence and mortality rates 16.9% higher than average according to a study published by the American Medical Association. In New York, communities with limited English proficiency make up 45.3% of a foreign-born population characterized by hundreds of languages and cultures. It would be extremely difficult for mainstream outlets to properly serve every population — but unconventional channels like pirate radio stations are already doing so.

Despite facing massive fines, most radio pirates are willing to take the risk of broadcasting illegally, in part, because the official fees to legally access commercial airwaves are astronomical and because the opportunity to file for a station rarely arises. The process of obtaining a commercial FM broadcasting permit for a new station is done through auctions, which the FCC holds sporadically. The next one is scheduled to take place this July 27, six years after the previous one, and the application window to participate was only open for 13 days. To become an eligible bidder, a pirate would first have to pay $3,870 in application fees and, if approved, submit an upfront payment that covers the minimum opening bid set for the channel they want. That minimum is determined by the potential value of stations in the same location that have similar broadcasting capacity. This year they range from $750 in Yakutat, Arkansas to $75,000 in Keeseville, New York. In the 27 years that the FCC has been auctioning the radio spectrum, it appears a New York City commercial FM frequency has never been auctioned.

Theoretically, if the permit were successfully obtained and the station were built in adherence to FCC guidelines within three years, the permit-holder would then have to apply for an operating license, which costs $235, and get their directional antenna licensed for $630. A cheaper alternative often proposed for stations is a non-commercial Low Power FM license which allows community stations to broadcast within a three-mile radius, but only registered non-profit organizations can apply and anyone who has previously broadcasted without a license is barred. It makes little difference, however, considering the application window has only ever opened twice in 21 years.

It’s no coincidence that the single legal avenue that community groups could take to access the airwaves has spent the large part of two decades collecting dust. LPFM radio has been a hot political issue since its inception for one group in particular: the National Broadcasters Association. The lobbying group and trade association represents some of the most powerful radio and television broadcasters in the country, like iHeartMedia and Univision, who have members on their board of directors. When the FCC established LPFM as a new class of radio station in 2000, NAB immediately pushed back by claiming the low power broadcasters would interfere with the signals of existing stations. They went as far as to fabricate a recording of radio interference by editing together two previously recorded radio signals, which the FCC then debunked and deemed an unlikely future occurrence.

 It’s no surprise, then, that an even more exaggerated version of the same argument is now being used against pirate stations said to interfere with emergency messaging. The lobbying groups that flooded Congress with money in support of the PIRATE Act were none other than NAB, iHeartMedia Inc., and Univision Holdings. In 2019, the three spent $12.72 million, $4.03 million and $1.12 million respectively on lobbying. Presumably, corporate radio’s brutish urge to gobble as much of the spectrum as they can is the through line connecting LPFM and pirate radio. Because most major radio conglomerates don’t profit from catering to communities already in the margins, they essentially shut those groups out entirely, leaving them to build their own rogue networks of information.

In response to a recent case in which the FCC levied a $453,015 fine against a pirate station in Boston, Commissioner Geoffrey Starks made a sympathetic statement about pirate stations, which is a complete departure from the rest of the commission’s attitude. Although he expressed full support for the enforcement action against the operator, the majority of Starks’ statement expressed concern for the lack of representation in licensed radio ownership.

 “I can’t help but think about what impact the Commission’s longstanding abdication of our diversity obligations has had on the development of unlicensed stations serving immigrant communities.” Starks said. “They cannot be allowed to serve their communities illegally. But I also believe that we must widen our aperture on today’s actions to fully capture how the FCC’s policies have let these communities down. Both are true, and we can all do better.”

 Starks quoted a local Haitian business owner who routinely listened to an unlicensed station as saying that the most essential means of communication they have is radio. “Haitian radio is very, very, very important in our community,” he recalls the man saying. “[If] all those stations get shut down, the Haitian community would shut down, too.”

 In contrast, Commissioner Michael O’Rielly’s statement called the case demonstrative of “a shameless level of disregard for the law that many pirates embody.”

 More recently, Starks stressed the importance of radio in getting Latinx communities through the pandemic, calling it a “public service to its listeners individually and the community collectively.” He boasted that more than 1,000 commercial and non-commercial radio stations provide 45.6 million Latinx listeners with Spanish-language broadcasts — but when contextualized in relation to 15,445 total licensed stations and 244.5 million total listeners, this means Spanish-language stations are only 6.5% of the radio landscape but Latinx people make up 18.3% of total listenership.

Local politicians seem to agree that these community-embedded radio personalities are key in spreading information, which explains why Bronx city councilmember Ruben Diaz Sr. paid FCC-deemed pirate Dioniso Nova $300 in 2019 to run publicity for his congressional campaign. The City reports that he also paid Nova $200 when he first ran for city council in 2017, as did Councilmember Rafael Salamanca Jr. In an email, Nova did not comment on his relationship with the councilmembers but denied transmitting without a license, saying his show — which can be streamed through his website — is popular enough in the community that strangers retransmit it.

 Notably, the FCC did little to crack down on pirate stations during the pandemic, but not due to a concern for the communities whose communication they would have disrupted. Under the PIRATE Act, the FCC is required to submit an annual report on implementation and enforcement; in its first year, the agency struggled to make any substantial progress in carrying out the act as they intended for two reasons. First, the commission listed an inability to safely carry out enforcement work like gathering evidence and witness statements while employees work remotely. The second is a complete lack of allocated funding despite the Congressional Budget Office estimating it would cost $11 million to implement. For those reasons, the agency says it was not able to develop its public database as instructed or complete its mandated “pirate sweeps.”

 This hike in enforcement was a priority for O’Rielly and for Trump-designated FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, but now that neither is part of the commission anymore, it’s unclear how much emphasis the current roster of commissioners will continue to put on the PIRATE Act. Acting Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel wrote in the annual report that whether they are able to conduct “pirate sweeps” will remain subject to obtaining funding through the appropriations process. The sweeps would entail an extra concentration of resources dispersed in the five largest pirate radio markets — including New York City — followed by six months of heavy monitoring to ensure the stations don’t return.

 The FCC estimates that there are 300 pirate stations across the country. The states with the largest presence of pirate activity according to the commission’s enforcement actions map are Florida, New York, Massachusetts and New Jersey — which are also the top four states with the largest Haitian and Dominican populations in the country.

 Mann, who studied the pirate radio community in the Kensington neighborhood of Brooklyn extensively in 2017, noted that although most of the stations she came across were Haitian and Spanish-speaking, she also stumbled upon two Hebrew-speaking, one Russian and several Jamaican, Trinidadian, and Guyanese stations.

 “You couldn't possibly argue that corporate media serves Haitian Creole-speaking people very well. That would just be ridiculous thing to say,” she said. “So, if you say we should facilitate giant corporate media, what you're saying is, we don't care about people who can only follow discussions in Haitian Creole.”

 Another important factor according to Mann is the accessibility of radio, which surpasses that of the internet.

 “[Radio] serves communities that are tied together by experience, but also by geography and language in ways that the internet is just not good at doing,” Mann said. “If you don't have broadband, or if you are at work somewhere where you can't or don’t have internet access — say, you're driving a taxi or a truck, or if you're working in a kitchen washing dishes or as a line cook —you can't really access the internet in those spaces, but you can access radio. So, from a listener’s point of view, it's definitely much more easily accessible in a lot of different settings.”

 According to the Migration Policy Institute, 21% of foreign-born U.S. residents who speak a language other than English expressed having no computer experience in 2015 compared to 5% of English speakers. Additionally, half a million New York City households currently have no internet at all. However, in 2019, Nielsen reported that 96% of all Hispanics over the age of 12 listen to radio during the week. Specifically regarding COVID-19, they report that 48% of Latinos said their favorite radio host made them feel more informed and less stressed.

 Back on FM Digital New York, a listener called into Aracena’s show on March 25, a year after the virus took hold of the world. He thanked Garrido for his presence. “A very special hello to the doctor, who is the most qualified person we have,” he said. “Thank you for always guiding me.”