In the context of Nicaragua’s Arias Peace Plan negotiations, The World Is Watching examines behind-the-scenes elements of news reporting that shaped our understanding of that event. Following ABC’s John Quinones in Managua while simultaneously recording editorial meetings with Peter Jennings and senior editors at the New York newsroom, Raymont investigates who decided the newsworthiness of events, whether the coverage was wholly factual, and whether correspondents reported all they witnessed or encountered editorial constraints they were forbidden to challenge. The juxtaposition of the news gathering and news editing processes reveals how the business works, exposing the distortions that are an inevitable—and sometimes intentional—part of the process.

A follow-up to Raymont’s multiple-award-winning film The World is Watching, which documented the media circus in Managua, Nicaragua, in 1988, The World Stopped Watching follows journalists who return to the country fifteen years after the conflict and explore what happens after the media spotlight has disappeared. The journalists, who include Bill Gentile of Newsweek, Randolph Ryan of The Boston Globe, and Jon Snow and Edith Coron of The Sunday Times of London, discover a country struggling with desperate poverty and political corruption, unreported by the international press.