CNN whistleblower Amber Lyon exposes how dictators sponsor and censor stories on mainstream media

In 2011, CNN sent four journalists to Bahrain to cover the Arab Spring.  For eight days, this small crew explored the Kingdom and experienced a dramatic and unexpected encounter.

What began as a one-hour documentary on the use of internet technologies and social media by democracy activists in the region quickly went sour as Amber Lyon, one of the journalists, and the rest of her crew were detained by "20 heavily-armed men", whose faces were "covered with black ski masks", and who "jumped from military vehicles" to apprehend them.

Upon return, Lyon was told that her documentary, recounting the whole thing, would not be aired on CNN International and that it would be edited.

Instead of the accepting her story get squashed, Lyon decided to blow the lid off of CNN's corrupt censorship.  She lost her job in the process, but blowing the whistle has garnered more attention than anything the network could have offered.

"I realized there was a correlation between the amount of media attention activists receive and the regime's ability to harm them, so I felt an obligation to show the world what our sources, who risked their lives to talk to us, were facing," she said.

She also figured out that the Kingdom of Bahrain has been funding CNN, the very organization charged with objectively reporting on them.  The entire thing stinks, but Lyon came out a hero.