(CNN) -- For CNN, Tiananmen Square was a watershed story -- a seminal moment in the network's history. Beijing bureau chief Mike Chinoy, producer Nancy Lane and Moscow bureau chief Steve Hurst Only nine years old in 1989, CNN was the only 24-hour news station on the air at the time. But staffers say the network suffered an inferiority complex when comparing itself to the major players in American television, who had dismissed the new upstart for years as "Chicken Noodle News." Enter Tiananmen Square. Change the face of television news. Take your place in the big leagues. "It put CNN on the map," said Mike Chinoy, CNN's Beijing bureau chief during the crisis.
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The story "put CNN on the map," said former Beijing bureau chief Mike Chinoy
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Reporters had flooded Beijing to cover the visit of Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev
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For the first time, a TV network beamed its own live pictures from China
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As protests grew, Chinese authorities ordered CNN to stop transmitting
Watch a Chinese official order CNN staff in @placeholder to stop broadcasting »