This is a very unfashionable documentary. The producers, Beth Sanders and Randy Baker do not believe that we are living in a strong and healthy democracy as most of their fellows Americans. That is the reason for the purpose and structure of this tape. Based on the interviews of several credited and notorious journalist and editors of well known newspapers and broadcasters, it truthfully deliberates its argument against today’s press role in this country.

There is much more in a democracy than the fundamentals of freedom of speech and the right to vote. One of the other necessities is a truly free press. It is the only business protected by the American Constitution. Defining when there is such freedom or not is the vital difficulty we face toward an acceptable level of liberty. That, at least, is the reaction that Beth Sanders is contributing with her videotape.

The pressure journalism suffers is founded in its top management, where every day a smaller minority of powerful businessmen uses the press as a tool to protect or enrich more their own other interests. Those interests are being reflected in their choices for editors and those interests being advance to the journalists in what is going to be aired or not. While justifying themselves in that it is just a matter of "preferences" among the huge amounts of news.

The several conversations also reflected how easy it is for an editor to filtrate the news. As Wendell Rawls Jr. remarked, with simple comments from editors such as "Gee, I don't know. How long do you think that would take?", "Gee, I don't know. Would you have to do any traveling?" or a " Gee, I don't know. What else do you have on your plate right now?" The journalist perceives the negative expressions to those kind of reports. That is the beginning of a soft censure. In which case, if a reporter is not in the established point of view, his/her career is in the borderline. That was what precisely happened to Wendell Rawls Jr. at the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and to Frances Cerra at the New York Times for her denouncement of the Long Island Lightning Company.

Nuclear facts as plant costs, nuclear waste or even situations of danger and alert as happened in Long Island, are hidden to the public. Excuses such as "nobody is dead", "It is not a problem", or "It does not mean anything" are more than routine so the news goes undercover. Since 1979, ABC, NBC and most of newspapers did not even report the accidents. One of the editors, calmly, justify himself that the public is no interested in those kind of news…

Then, the video likewise, covers how dependable are the newspapers from its advertisers. Those easily can ‘punish’ the papers when they feel disturbed by cutting with their ads and so cutting a 75% of the revenues of the information organizations. In 1994 for instance, Mercury News had been ‘castigate’ after an article about the big profits that direct factory’s auto dealers were getting. After the auto-dealers withdrew their ads the paper had to publish a whole page encouraging the readers to buy a car from a factory operated dealer and the ‘discipline’ was resumed. Other supporting evidence was the "The Kwitny report" case. In 1988 the producers were put in the hands of being privately financed. They went off air when they secure funds from the firms. Finally, it considered how other, conservative reports, got not one, but three national televisions shows, just because they were saying what military contractors and big holdings liked to hear, more expenditures!

This kind of soft censure goes beyond local issues to international ones as well. Press never questioned the President’s decision on the attack to Iraq in 1991. By the way, a step repeated one month ago, October-1998, after an almost evident attack over Iraq. Television report were totally founded in military reports, all obtained formally in one single Hotel in Saudi Arabia. Over exposed about the dictatorship of Saddam Hussein, Americans ignored absolutely their hostess Arabia Saudi, and Kuwait’s repression states. They over report about the Kurds killed in north Iraq, while they’d been amnesic to the thousands Kurds terminated by the NATO’s Turkey.

A lawsuit was formed toward the governmental restrictions toward the press in the battlefield or troops by newspaper as The Guardian, and other international ones. Neither the New York Times, Washington Post, CBS, ABC, PBS, NBS nor other American larger media joined the lawsuit. They just reported what the government liked to be covered, the military instructions.

It is not a guarantee to be published if you are a good journalist or not, rather of your political or bias toward the establishment. The example of Jon Alpert is a good example exposed in the document. Jon Alpert has received 6 Emmy awards for his reports. He was the first American reporting the devastating effects of the bombing in Iraq. He couldn’t air it until two years after. The facts are easy to find for yourself. Try to find the picture of only one kid (or soldier) dead in the battlefield in the news reported. It should be easy to find 1 in the hundreds of thousand deaths… one missile failing the objective or hundreds of thousands of Iraqis families moving toward the mountains. You won’t find any picture of that but some images from tanks taking from a satellite or a missile toward an empty warehouse.

To close the review, certainly there is much more than freedom of speech or elections for a democracy to sustain suchlike that. One of these other fundamentals is the fact that the public should be concerned in the way that the media is being operated, it is limiting us from reality, hence stopping us from making the right choices. Choices toward nuclear power plants, corruption, war or any other of our regular day after day issues. Without a doubt, the threat that the free press is suffering now is something we’ll pay for in the future, maybe with our own already scarce freedom achieved.