Newspaper report on Eva Peron's Death

Although newspapers are a popular way to locate facts related to a specific event, because they attempt to cover events as they unfold or before they even have all the relevant information, newspapers often include factual errors and always reflect a point of view. Newspaper reports are frequently incomplete, biased, and/or inaccurate. For example, following the death of Argentina's first lady Eva Peron in 1952, many newspapers, in Argentina and beyond, remained vague on the cause of death due to a sense that the phrase “ovarian cancer” was too sexual to be printed. Furthermore, newspaper coverage assumes that readers share knowledge about the circumstances of the event that historians decades later may or may not know. In the case of Eva Peron’s death, while The New York Times had to explain who Eva Peron was and how Argentina responded to her, local papers left out such information. Reporters and editors at the time did not have to explain who Evia was, give the location of the cemetery, or provide details about local funeral practices. Anyone who bought a Buenos Aires newspaper at the time already knew that.