Journalist accuses WLRN of discrimination. Radio station disputes allegation
Less than two weeks after the host of WLRN’s “Sundial” show reported allegations of discrimination and anti-Hispanic sentiment to his employers at the South Florida public radio station, WLRN canceled the show and fired host Carlos Frias and his team, Frias’ attorney told the Miami Herald.
Frias on Tuesday filed a complaint with the Florida Commission on Human Relations and the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission alleging WLRN discriminated against him.
On Wednesday, WLRN afternoon news anchor Catalina Garcia resigned.
“I felt very disappointed, very disillusioned with the way management has handled the whole situation,” Garcia, 55, told the Herald. “As a Latina, I felt that I needed to stand in solidarity with Carlos and the whole ‘Sundial’ team because I know the truth.”
Frias, 48, a former food editor at the Miami Herald, was hired by WLRN in 2022. For a little over a year, he hosted the talk show “Sundial,” which featured interviews with South Florida artists, writers and other prominent individuals.
Until Feb. 1, when Sergio Bustos, WLRN’s vice president of news, ousted Frias, producer Leslie Ovalle Atkinson and associate producer Elisa Baena, the team behind “Sundial,” the discrimination filing read.
On WLRN’s website, it says the program was canceled on Feb. 2.
WLRN CEO John LaBonia
did not respond to a request for comments Wednesday.
In a statement, WLRN said its decision was based on a want to focus resources in the newsroom and expand an investigative-journalism team, Axios reported.
Frias, who won two James Beard awards and was part of the Miami Herald team that won the 2022 Pulitzer Prize for coverage of the Surfside condo collapse, said he did not believe the show’s cancellation was due to a need to shift resources but instead the product of anti-Latino comments, he wrote in the filing.
“To say that a program on the culture of Miami is too Latino ... of course it’s Latino,” lawyer William R. Amlong, Frias’ attorney, said. “Miami is Latino.”
‘SOUNDING VERY LATINO’
In August, Caitie Muñoz, Frias’ boss, told a “Sundial” producer that the show was “sounding very Latino,” the filing read.
Muñoz created a spreadsheet showing the ethnicity of people invited on the show but only those who mentioned having Latino or Hispanic roots during an episode, the filing read.
When Frias asked a supervisor about the ethnicity spreadsheet, Peter Maerz, WLRN’s vice president of radio, said the show was making a certain group of listeners uncomfortable, Frias wrote in the filing.
“[Maerz] responded that we had to be considerate of people’s ‘cultural comfort zones,’ which I understood to mean white people were being made uncomfortable by how diverse our show was (as is our Miami home),”
Frias wrote in the filing.
Amlong told the Herald that there had been other employees in the past who complained about the station being “anti-Latino.”
In December, Frias wrote that he received a racist email from an anonymous listener. When he shared that on his social media as an example of the racial discrimination that comes with his job and to boast about his hard work, Frias said in the filing that he was officially reprimanded and disciplined.
Frias said Bustos scolded him for “airing our dirty laundry” in an email and insisted he take down the post, which Frias did.
This prompted him to file a complaint with his Human Resources representative, and in a meeting on Jan. 22, he laid out all the discrimination that he alleged he and his staff have received.
A week later, Frias and his staff were let go.
‘INTERNAL SOUL-SEARCHING’
Under federal law, WLRN has up to 180 days to conduct an investigation into claims of discrimination or issue a notice of right to sue, allowing Frias to seek damages through a lawsuit.
“I don’t know how the litigation is going to develop,” Amlong, Frias’ attorney, said. “I would expect that there would be some internal soul-searching.”
Amlong also said his team will be looking into possible First Amendment violations.
‘YOU HAVE TO STAND UP FOR WHAT YOU BELIEVE IN’
As for Garcia, the news anchor who quit on Wednesday, just minutes before her scheduled broadcast, WLRN’s management called for a newsroom staff meeting to discuss the federal discrimination charge that Frias filed against the radio station.
After hearing what she considered lies, she quit on the spot — ending her seven-year employment with the station. “You have to stand up for what you believe in,” Garcia said.
During Wednesday’s meeting, Garcia said executives dismissed Frias’ claims and justified their actions.
She went on to tell the executives that she understood the firing revolved around the show having too much of Latino bent. However, Garcia said the management team swiftly rebuffed that claim, contending no one said that.
That was the last straw for Garcia.
A month prior, Garcia spoke to a member of management about concerns that the “Sundial” programming was “too Latino,” she said. The claim was not disputed, she said.
“What I heard from management was not the truth,” she said. “So I told them, ‘You know what? I’m working for WLRN because I respect the station and the work that it did, but I’ve lost respect for [it]. I can’t work for an organization that I don’t respect. So consider this my resignation.’ ”