IRTP Pulls Crime Stories From Peru’s TV Perú Online
MEDIA · PERU
Key Facts
- —The country Peru, which elects regional and municipal authorities on Sunday 4 October. IRTP is the state institute that runs the public channel TV Perú and national radio.
- —What happened At least ten stories on extortion and killings were removed from TV Perú’s website and social accounts on 29 September, investigative site El Foco reported on 1 October.
- —Who is involved IRTP head Cinthia Ramírez Santillana, formally off duty from 29 September to 8 October, and acting head Víctor Fernando Masumura Tanaka, Diario Uno reported on 2 October.
- —What it means for you TV Perú links to crime reports from August and September may no longer open. Reports on police operations and on attacks before 28 July remain online, El Foco found.
- —Still open Who gave the order, on what editorial grounds, and whether the stories return. IRTP had not answered El Foco, and no public statement had appeared by 3 October.
Peru’s state broadcaster IRTP, the National Institute of Radio and Television that runs TV Perú, has removed crime coverage online. Its own journalists want to know who ordered it.
Investigative site El Foco reported on 1 October that at least ten stories on extortion and killings vanished on 29 September. On 2 October, the newspaper Diario Uno reported unease among IRTP staff over the removals.
What was removed
El Foco listed several of the missing items. One covered a driver burned to death in a minivan in Lima’s Los Olivos district on 28 September.
Another reported an extortion attack on a minibus of the ETFOCAM company in Callao on 29 September. Links to such stories now return a message saying access is denied.
A 16 September report on gunmen attacking an Allinbus driver in San Martín de Porres also vanished, including its YouTube video. So did reports of a 14 September shooting in San Juan de Miraflores and a 12 August attack in Ate.
A pattern tied to the new government
The removed stories share a time frame. All concern events in August and September, after President Keiko Fujimori took office on 28 July.
El Foco searched TV Perú’s site for terms such as “extortion” and “hitman”. Reports on police operations and arrests remained, as did attacks dated before 28 July.
An unnamed TV Perú employee told El Foco that superiors had ordered staff to delete all extortion-related content. The source said the aim was to protect the government’s popularity, a claim not independently confirmed.
Inside the broadcaster
Diario Uno reported that journalists, editors, news directors and technicians are asking who decided this, and on what editorial criteria. The IRTP case has also drawn concern from journalists at other outlets, the paper said.
Its account adds that some removed items covered police and armed forces operations against criminal groups. That detail differs from El Foco’s finding that police-operation stories largely stayed online.
The timing complicates the picture. According to Diario Uno, IRTP head Cinthia Ramírez Santillana is formally off duty from 29 September to 8 October.
Víctor Fernando Masumura Tanaka is acting head in that period, the paper said. Staff want clarity partly so that decisions taken in her absence are not wrongly attributed to her.
Why it matters before Sunday’s vote
Peruvians elect regional and municipal authorities on Sunday 4 October (see Peru Election Prosecutors Top 6,800 for the 4 October Local Vote). Regional races without a clear winner go to a second round (see Peru Sets Regional Election Runoff for November).
A public broadcaster’s archive is part of the record that voters and researchers rely on. Removing reports without an editorial note makes that record harder to check.
There are limits to what is known so far. None of the reports cited here mention dismissals, and the internal push for answers shows staff questioning the decision openly.
What Is Not Yet Known
It is not known who ordered the removals, or whether the instruction was written down. IRTP had not answered El Foco by publication, and no public IRTP statement had appeared by Saturday 3 October.
It is also unclear whether the stories were deleted or only blocked, and whether they will return. Ramírez Santillana’s leave ends on 8 October, which may bring the first official explanation.
Sources: El Foco, 1 October 2026; Diario Uno, 2 October 2026; Crónica Viva, 2 October 2026.
Editorial responsibility: Matthias Camenzind, Editor-in-Chief · Editorial standards · Report an error