Ricardo Uceda has been chief of the investigative unit at El Comercio, the leading daily newspaper in Lima, Peru, since 1994. Prior to that he was at the weekly magazine SI, where he undertook major investigations. Notable among his work is his investigation into the Barrios Altos massacre, in which those responsible were revealed to be members of an elite group of the Peruvian Army Intelligence Service.

He also led an investigation into the disappearance and murder of a teacher and nine students at La Cantuta University. Additionally, under Uceda's leadership, El Comercio has uncovered several cases of surgical sterilizations performed on pregnant women without their informed consent and reported on the systematic theft of public funds assigned to prevent the effects of El Nino. Recently he led the investigation of the Peruvian election process, exposing an organization formed to forge more than a million signatures used by Peruvian President Alberto Fujimori to register his candidacy for a third presidential term.

Uceda has received the International Prize for Press Freedom from the Committee to Protect Journalists and the National Journalism Human Rights Prize, awarded by the National Coordination Agency for Human Rights. He has also been nominated for the Latin American Studies Media Award of the Latin American Center at Stanford University.