El asunto Audinot en la prensa absolutista: tergiversación de la información y manipulación de la opinión pública a principios del siglo XIX

• Main Author: Alejandro Bañón Pardo
• Format: Article
• Language: Spanish
• Published: Temps, Espaces, Langages, Europe Méridionale-Méditerranée (TELEMME) 2019-04-01
• Series: El Argonauta Español
• Subjects: Audinot; Barteau (Jean); Absolutist press; Reactionary press; Cortes de Cádiz; Conspiracy
• Online Access: http://journals.openedition.org/argonauta/3275

The Audinot case was a false Republican conspiracy, probably invented by the absolutist faction to attack the Regency, defame prominent Liberal politicians and prove the old absolutist assumption that defended the alliance between Napoleon and the Spanish Liberals. The present article shows how the reactionary press diffused and used between February and April 1814 the judicial information of the case for political purposes, by giving veracity to the testimony of an adventurer, distorting the information, inventing news to strengthen the credibility of the pretended plot and exalting public opinion through the overstatement of the issue, the significance of which became such that it was widely debated in the Spanish Parliament.