I have to wonder if one of the big networks, CNN, NBC or ABC were there reporting, would the same thing be applied to their journalists?
How do the reporters from the larger networks know that this kind of reporting is off-limits?
Is it common sense? And, if so, does that suggest Ms. Goodman was in the wrong here?
Were they told by the pipeline developers? Wouldn't that threat/restriction in itself be worth some amount of reporting? Would that be wise for the developers to do? Might not such behavior merely further attract the interest of journalists with the legal resources to combat the charges?
I think part of it is explainable by the economic incentive to not upset corporations that the network depends on for ad revenue.
In fact it reviews the very case of East Timor. It compares the near total silence of coverage of that (Indonesia's brutal dictator was an ally) to the coverage of the Communist Khmer Rouge atrocities in Cambodia, which was extensive and impassioned.
They discuss a few simple mechanisms that help explain how this bias happens in our otherwise democratic society, which they call the Propaganda Model.[2] A key factor is that major media is funded by advertising, which imparts a kind of natural selection for viewpoints that favor the class interests of the business elite (which extends to foreign policy that favors a powerful American state). So by the time you get hired as a reporter for major media, you've already been selected. You don't have to be told to do the right thing, because you already believe what you're doing to be right.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Manufacturing-Consent-Political-Econo...