title: Why Nicaragua Vanished: A Story of Reporters and Revolutionaries
author:  Robert S. Leiken 
description: What really happened in Nicaragua? Robert Leiken analyzes the shocking misreporting of American journalists and their failure to understand why the Sandinistas lost in 1990. Written with verve and calm, his account will open your eyes to a parade of media stereotypes. Though not an angry book, it will make a reasonable person angry. (Harvey C. Mansfield, Harvard University)<br /><br />Robert Leiken has been seeking and telling the truth about events in Nicaragua for more than 20 years. Not everyone else has done so. Here is his report on what he has learned, and what everyone interested in Nicaragua should know. (Michael Barone, senior writer, U.S. News &amp; World Report, and co-author of The Almanac of American Politics)<br /><br />Provides intriguing answers to these questions and for the first time tests media coverage of a major foreign policy crisis against an independent analysis of the events covered. Beautifully written, <i>Why Nicaragua Vanished</i> is perfect for all interested in the media, foreign policy, Latin America, or U.S. intellectual life. (<i>Sir Read Alot Book Review</i>)<br /><br />The book is highly detailed, and often persuasive. (<i>Columbia Journalism Review</i>)<br /><br />Robert Leiken has produced a masterpiece of serious scholarship, sound reasoning, and lucid writing. His detailed examination of media bias should have a profound impact on the way Americans view news coverage of foreign policy, and, one hopes, on the way journalists view themselves. (Robert Kagan, author of A Twilight Struggle: American Power and Nicaragua, 1977?1990)
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  **What Uncle Sam Really Wants** Copyright (C) 1993 by Noam Chomsky  
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  ## Teaching Nicaragua a lesson
  
  It wasn't just El Salvador that was ignored by the mainstream US media during
  the 1970s. In the ten years prior to the overthrow of the Nicaraguan dictator
  Anastasio Somoza in 1979, US television -- all networks -- devoted exactly
  _one hour_ to Nicaragua, and that was entirely on the Managua earthquake of
  1972.
  
  From 1960 through 1978, the New York Times had three editorials on Nicaragua.
  It's not that nothing was happening there -- it's just that whatever was
  happening was unremarkable. Nicaragua was of no concern at all, as long as
  Somoza's tyrannical rule wasn't challenged.
  
  When his rule _was_ challenged, by the Sandinistas in the late 1970s, t