Junín and Ayacucho fake news: the Iberian press against reality (1824-1825)

Abstract

In armed conflicts, both weapons and the pen form part of the resources and strategies of combat. This article demonstrates how the opposing sides in Junín and Ayacucho used the press to support their tactics and shift public opinion to coincide with their political and military interests. In some cases, the news was exaggerated or presented as the opposite of what had actually happened. In other cases, some of the information was omitted or the story was simply removed altogether. In terms of the results of the fighting, newspapers and gazettes positioned themselves along marked strategic and ideological lines, moving closer to or further from the documented facts depending on the interests of the power groups they represented at the time. As such we can already begin to appreciate the phenomenon of using the media and manipulating public opinion, something which in today’s societies has acquired an enormous degree of sophistication.