Well, since there is no button for "between the OT and the PT", EU it is! I've been wondering how the Empire handled the disappearance of the Jedi in the time between the founding of the Empire and ANH.

At the beginning of the ROTS novelization, there is a blurb about how Obi-Wan and Anakin have become stars of the holonet. I have to imagine that the Jedi Council members had a fair amount of air time, too. So my question is: how do you go from media darling to enemy of the state overnight?

There was plenty of misinformation floating around about the Jedi order. There were rumors of vast treasure stored in the temple, it seems everyone in the EU had an opinion about Jedi, either very positive or very negative. I don't recall any EU characters that were lukewarm on Jedi. They ironically inspired strong feelings from the citizens of the Republic. Certainly the advent of war did little to shed light on the inner workings of the Jedi order.

Now, the question is "How did things go so badly for the Jedi after the rise of Darth Vader and the Empire?" Obviously a megalomaniac Sith lord and his apprentice didn't help any, but they were hardly warm and fuzzy poster boys. Jedi had enjoyed real media cache (sorry, no accent button) before Order 66. The clones wiped out most of the Jedi, but even in the time of ANH it wasn't like there were people casting around saying "now, if only we had some Jedi left, we could get rid of this corrupt regime." By the time Luke is of age, Jedi are the stuff of legends. That's a big change for a generation's time.

Think about items that were ubiquitous in a previous generations. 8 track tape players? Sure, no one owns one, but everyone knows what they were!

In my mind the answer boils down to how people in the GFFA received their news and information. The holonet. There is a parallel in today's time. The US and UK governments are pulling documents off the web that they think are too sensitive in these days of the war against terror.

TV stations, aided by cable, are increasingly polarized. You don't even have to listen to the other side if you don't want to. All the Empire had to do was control the holonet. Like the free world of today, the Republic's citizens were used to getting honest and true information from the holonet.

Democratically free galaxyies (or countries) have media that tell the truth. One of the hallmarks of a dictatorship (or worse) is their control of the media to say only what they want it to say. In some countries, people get to do a guessing game to find out the truth based on what is being reported in the media. It is a strange situation to people who grew up with a media that watches the government, not a media that is a slathering lap dog of the ruling elite.

Ultimately, the Empire controlled the holonet and made the Jedi out to be part of the problem all along. Group memory is so very short, all the Empire had to do was feed the populace the information that war was now done, and then slide in that it was all the Jedi's part to begin with. The natural distrust that GFFA citizens had of the special or different took over. No wonder the Jedi were so quiet about what they really did inside that temple. They had been in there plotting the overthrow of the Republic for millennium. Good thing the Empire had someone to report this issue.

Keep your eyes open. Media that is the arm of the government is not the friend of the people.