Discussing Media Manipulation in José Ricardo Morales’s Play Cómo el poder de las noticias nos da noticias del poder

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article critically analyzes the media practices that intertwine private and public interests and the distortion of reality carried out by journalists in José Ricardo Morales’s play Cómo el poder de las noticias nos da noticias del poder (1969). This play is used as a case study to analyze the playwright’s ideas about using media as a manipulation tool to control and distract the audience in modern capitalist societies. The play’s analysis addresses interviews and the commodification/objectification of women as discursive devices of distraction producing false information in the media industry. This study establishes that Morales’s play reveals the cultural space of distraction used by the media, which contributes to creating a parallel narrative of possible futures, both defying national literary canons and anticipating several issues related to media intervention by corporate media and politicians in the 1960s.