The polemic photo taken by Julio Angulo to falsely condemn a demonstrator who was protesting against Tía María, extracted from Portal Perú and widely shared on the Internet. The police force of any country should exist to protect citizens while its press should impart objective information, but unrest surrounding a strategic mining project in Peru has forced people to question whether either institution is fulfilling its role. Protests at the $1.4 billion Tia Maria development in Islay province, Peru, have been ongoing since March, claiming the life of a protester and a policeman this week and another protester in April. Farmers in the region believe Tia María will hurt water supplies and have blocked roads and held rallies in an attempt to kick the project — owned by the Southern Copper Corp company — out of their community. But the police and media, they say, are doing the company's bidding by trying to demonise them. Correo Arequipa, a local daily newspaper, set off a storm in the Peruvian blogosphere with its coverage of the anti-mining protests towards the end of last month. In one photo the daily ran on April 24, a protester was pictured being arrested clutching a small iron contraption in his hand. The caption to the photo referred to him as “a detainee who was wielding a sharp-pointed iron construction weapon” and added that the weapon “could be lethal for the unfortunate person on the end of a blow from the irritable protestor”. Yet a few hours later the small local TV channel MollendinosTV-Islay TV disseminated a video titled “Complicity between Police and Press (CORREO) against Antonio the Farmer”, that showed the photo was not what it seemed. The outlet's video clearly shows police approaching the protestor, later identified as Antonio Coasaca, with the iron contraption and forcing him to hold it as Correo Arequipa's photographer took a photo. Once the video emerged, Correo Arequipa covered it and then erased the original image from their website. EL CORREO- PRENSA AMARILLA, VENDIDA Y CON CARENCIA DE ÉTICA Y NI QUE DECIR DE LA POLICÍA. #TiaMaria @diariocorreo pic.twitter.com/nh2Jl371ek — Claudia Tenorio ᴬᴸ (@clau_elgato) April 24, 2015 Correo – yellow press, sellouts with a lack of ethics and where to start with the police. The video of MollendinosTV-Islay TV gathered traction on social networks prompting a discussion about police and press ethics. Of the more than one thousand comments on the video, user balletperu.blogspot.com sums up the feeling of the great majority: Qué vergüenza, policía y fotoperiodista haciendo porquería de su labor. Soy de Mollendo, sí me gustaría proyectos y progreso para mi ciudad natal, pero no de esa manera, con injusticias y engaños […] What a shame, police and photojournalist doing rubbish in their mission. I am from Mollendo and yes I'd like progress and projects for my hometown, but not in this way, with injustice and deceits […] Journalist and anthropologist Alberto Niquen thinks that “what happened in Mollendo is another demonstration that the criminalising of the protests is a state policy which has been increased”: He reflected: Te informan o te desinforman, o simplemente te mal informan. ¿Qué hacer cuando un fotógrafo y un redactor de un diario de tiraje nacional asumen como verdad lo que dice la Policía Nacional del Perú (PNP) y permiten la publicación de una noticia incriminadora? Es más, ¿qué pensar cuando lo hacen sabiendo que se está ‘sembrando’ algo que no es? Como no indignarse cuando descubres que una noticia es consecuencia de una ‘siembra’, de una ‘falacia’, de un plan de criminalización. You are informed or misinformed, or just wrongly informed. What to do when a photographer and an editor of a national circulation newspaper assumes as true what the National Police of Peru (PNP) says and allows the publication of an incriminatory news piece? Even more, what to think when they do it consciously knowing an untruth has been ‘planted'? How not to be outraged when you find out that this news is a result of a ‘planting’, of a ‘fallacy’, of a plot to criminalise? Political fallout from the scandal was swift. Peru's Ombudsman to the Minister of the Interior successfully pushed for Coasaca's release, while National Police Director, General Jorge Flores Goicochea, announced an extensive investigation into the official who was seen ‘planting’ the weapon on Antonio. Under pressure, Correo Arequipa newspaper finally apologized to readers and reported an internal investigation to determine responsibility for the incident.