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Peru News Media
In 1990 Peru had one of the freest and most varied
presses in
the world, with virtually no curbs on what was published.
The
best-established and largest circulating newspaper was the
slightly conservative daily, El Comercio.
Expreso,
owned by former minister of economy and finance Manuel
Ulloa, was
also slightly to the right of center. A variety of
left-leaning
dailies included Cambio, El Diario de Marka,
and
La República. Hoy was the pro-APRA daily.
El
Diário was a pro-SL newspaper that used to be
published daily
in Lima and circulated approximately 5,000 copies a day.
The
government closed it in late 1988, after the editor was
accused
of being a member of the SL, but it reappeared the next
year as a
weekly. A state-owned newspaper, El Peruano,
published a
daily listing of decrees and government proceedings.
Oiga
magazine was a right wing weekly, Caretas and
Sí
were centrist weeklies. Quehacer was a bimonthly
research
publication sympathizing with the left.
Peru had a total of 140 state and privately owned
television
channels. Channel 4, the state-owned channel, provided
relatively
well-balanced news, as it had fierce competition from its
private
competitors. The popular weekly news program, "Panorama,"
which
broadcast in-depth interviews with a wide range of
intellectuals,
politicians, and even guerrillas, was quite influential.
The
MRTA, for example, made its entrance into national
politics when
its takeover of Juanjuí in San Martín Department was aired
on
Panorama.
Peru's media were in general varied, competitive, and
highly
informative, and options from all sides of the political
spectrum
were available. Peru's population was a highly informed
one, with
even the poorest people usually having access to
television. In
early 1991, when the intelligence police found a video of
Abimáel
Guzmán Reynoso dancing in a drunken stupor, it was aired
on
national television. When in early 1991 President Fujimori
passed
Decree Law 171, the media played a major role in raising
public
awareness as to the impunity that it imparted onto the
armed
forces and the threat that it posed to investigative
journalism
in the emergency zones. The publicity was in part
responsible for
the repeal of the decree in Congress. Indeed, the extent
to which
freedom of the press continued to exist in Peru, despite
the many
other obstacles to democratic government, was an important
and
positive force for Peru's democracy.
Data as of September 1992
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