English speaking media are not the only news sources fighting the rising tide of misinformation and disinformation infiltrating American politics. Spanish language outlets have also been targets.

Journalist Martina Guzman has reported on news and events affecting Detroit’s Hispanic community for many years. She also directs the Race and Justice Reporting Initiative at the Damon J. Keith Center for Civil Rights. It’s part of Wayne State University’s Law School.

Guzman says a credible source gave her a tip that Russian agents were buying airtime on Spanish language radio stations across the U.S. before the 2024 election.

“I was alarmed that it was happening, and more alarmed at how pervasive it was,” she said.

So, she decided to investigate. She discovered that a small handful of people knew what was happening because they were listening. She was, too, and wanted to make other journalists aware of it.

“I was convinced there was a tool that would allow you to listen, and that would make it easy for journalists to find out what was happening,” Guzman said.

To her surprise, there wasn’t. So, she set out to create one. Working with Public Data Works, Guzman and design engineers built “VERDAD,” which means “truth” in Spanish.

VERDAD “listens” to Spanish language broadcasts and begins recording as soon as it “hears” certain words that Guzman and the designers entered into the system. Then it transcribes the broadcast and translates it into English.

“American journalists who don’t speak Spanish now have an entire way of monitoring disinformation so they can see it in English,” she said.

Guzman added that journalists are monitoring Arabic, French, Creole, and Vietnamese broadcasts for misinformation, as well as Russia’s Sputnik propaganda channel.

“Once the tool is built, it can be applied to multiple languages at the same time,” she said.

If you resolved to beef up your vocabulary in 2025, Wayne State University’s Word Warriors are here to help.

Each year, the group invites people to submit words that have fallen out of use over time. The Word Warriors sift through the entries and choose the ones they believe deserve to be revived.

Chris Williams works with words daily. He’s the assistant director of editorial services in WSU’s Marketing and Communications Office. He also curates the Word Warriors list.

Williams says people submit words every week.

“We’ll look them over and we’ll see if we think they cut the mustard,” he says.

The group adds new words to its Facebook page. Williams says the more users like certain words, the more likely they’ll make the annual top ten list.

“Some of these words are just really fun, and we want to encourage people to use this in their writing or conversation,” he said.

This year’s words (and definitions) include:

• ensorcelled (enchanted, bewitched)
• honeyfuggle (to ingratiate oneself by deceit)
• hurkle-durkle (to lounge in bed long after it’s time to get up)
• inure (to accustom someone to something, especially something unpleasant)
• scaramouch (a cowardly buffoon)
• shackbaggerly (in a loose or disorderly manner)
• sonsy (having an attractive and healthy appearance)
• syzygy (the nearly straight-line configuration of at least three celestial bodies in a gravitational system, such as an eclipse)
• tiffin (a light meal, often lunch)
• vesper (evening)

Williams says the Word Warriors list makes a good counterpoint to Lake Superior State University’s annual list of “banished” words and phrases.

Related: Lake Superior State University shares Banished Words list for 2025

“They want to take some words out of the English language, we want to bring some back, and maybe that provides some balance,” Williams said.

He invites people to submit for next year’s list at the Word Warriors website.

If certain words and phrases make you cringe, you’ll appreciate Lake Superior State University’s Banished Words List for 2025.

It’s a tradition that started almost 50 years ago, when members of the school’s public relations staff began collecting misused, overused, or generally useless terms.

Today, people from around the world nominate their least favorites for inclusion on the tongue-in-cheek list. Dr. David Travis, president of the university, shared with WDET who decides what entries make the cut.

“We have a committee that even I as president don’t know who makes that committee up. It’s some of our professors and other individuals on campus, and they meet in secrecy. They review all the submissions. And we get them from all over the world, typically in the 1,000s and they go through the list, they look for the most popularly submitted ones,” he said. “I think they add probably a little bit of their own opinion on some things, and then a decision is made at the top 10.”

The list includes terms like “cringe,” which has evolved into a noun and verb, and “game changer,” overused beyond its sports context. “Era” is included due to its misuse in self-descriptive contexts, while “dropped” is overused in music and TV. “If you know, you know” is popular but often unclear. “Sorry, not sorry” and “utilize” are overused, and “skibity” is a global term — associated with skibity toilet videos on YouTube — that the committee aims to prevent from spreading.

“I’ve got a whole list of pet peeves myself, of words, and I will say, as president of the university that oversees the banished words list, I submitted several myself,” Travis said. “None of them made the list.”