Reply #181: I would like to point out that it is not correct that twenty years ago,

[truedelphi]

there were only a few cancers on the face of the media.

please examine the following - in January 1994, there was the first of the Chiapas uprisings.

The Chiapas uprising involved the poorest of the world's poor rising up against the Mexican government and against the Elite that owns the area that they farm.

Our networks bravely sent forth their up and coming journalists. Young people who were infused with that remarkable enthusiasm that the young so often possess. And that becomes rarer (for most of us) as we age.

They were given carte blanche - not only was it that they went down there at the bequest of ABC, NBC and CBS, but they were doing some remarkable journalism. The young reporters went inside the huts and interviewed the family members. They pointed out to the American TV audience at home that the floors were dirt, the utensils for eating were only several in number and shared among the huge families. It was a type of poverty that we cannot even imagine.

And the networks kept promising more and even better coverage of this rebellion.

By Friday of that week, I was so excited about this development. I was convinced that not only would there soon be surfacing some most important information about the non-democracy our larger agricultural cartels have imposed among the poor of the world, but that perhaps some young Edwina Murrow would come from the situation and be among us for a generation.

but instead that Friday, when I turned on the news to see the latest Chia-as report, there was only the report - bulletin style - that Nancy Kerrigan the skater had her knee shattered by someone perhaps int he pay of Tonya Harding.

And that was the last of the Chiapas reporting.

Only years later did a tiny throw away sentence in Rolling Stone explain what had happened - Citibank had gotten all the networks to pull the story on the Chiapas. They did that, I imagine, simply by letting the network execs know that they could not continue to have Citibank and all related smaller company advertising if they kept it up.

So in regard to this story, the networks folded.