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EU Election Observation Mission highlights El Peruano daily's neutrality during elections

Photo: ANDINA

00:03 | Lima, Jul. 28.

In its latest report on General Elections in Peru, the European Union (EU) Election Observation Mission highlighted the neutrality of the Official Gazette El Peruano in terms of news coverage during the presidential runoff election.

According to the document, El Peruano dedicated 32 front page headlines to both presidential candidates —Pedro Castillo and Keiko Fujimori— and their corresponding political groups Peru Libre and Fuerza Popular.

"El Peruano dedicated 32 front page headlines to both candidates and their respective political parties. Each candidate/political party got 16 headlines, and they were all written in a neutral tone," the mission remarked.

"As for election-related stories, El Peruano dedicated 45 articles to both candidates/political parties (23 to Pedro Castillo/Peru Libre and 22 to Keiko Fujimori/Fuerza Popular), and they were all presented in a neutral tone," it added.

The EU mission of experts monitored —on a daily basis— four private newspapers and El Peruano between May 17 and June 4.

All election-related stories were considered in the monitoring exercise to identify the positive, negative, or neutral tones in the content.

Neutrality

In this regard, the report underlines that El Peruano had the most neutral tone when presenting the information of the two candidates who ran for the Presidency of the Republic.

"State-run media offered a balanced news coverage," reads the final report, which noted that election-related information from most private media outlets was clearly biased in favor of Keiko Fujimori and to the detriment of Pedro Castillo.

In this sense, the mission said that 68% of the 151 front page headlines about Castillo/Peru Libre had a negative tone, while 32% of them were neutral.

Meanwhile, 60% of the 80 front page headlines about Fujimori/Fuerza Popular had a neutral tone, while 31% of them were positive and 9% were negative.

It should be pointed out that, according to the Digital News Report 2021 crafted by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism —which covers 46 countries around the world— the Official Gazette El Peruano registers the highest rating in terms of trustworthiness domestically speaking.

The document specifies that "State-run media —El Peruano and TV Peru Noticias— rank highly for trust —even though the government itself is not often trusted."

Concerning the South American country, the report places El Peruano first —in the Brand Trust Scores Category— followed by RRP Noticias, TV Peru Noticias, and Canal N, among other media outlets.

(END) JCR/FPQ/RMB/MVB

Publicado: 28/7/2021