This collection of texts, by authors from Nicaragua and the US, is the first critical anthology on the media and culture in Nicaragua, where concern for the "freedom of the press" has become a veritable fetish for the international news media. In analyzing numerous aspects of the subject in their social-historical dimension, the authors attempt to assess the cultural achievements, problems, and future of Nicaragua in its struggle to develop a practice of democratic participation despite the siege conditions of US-imposed warfare: economic and psychological as well as military.