In December, Al Jazeera Berlin correspondent Aktham Suliman left the news outlet, saying he felt its primary funder, the Qatari government, exerted too much influence over Al Jazeera's coverage. Suliman is just the latest in a string of resignations from Al Jazeera in protest of editorial interference. In an interview from August of last year, Bob talks to blogger and political commentator Sultan Al Qassemi about what he sees as the problems with Al Jazeera's coverage of ongoing fighting in Syria.

Yo La Tengo - I'll Be Around

The rape and murder of a young woman in India has brought protesters to the streets. Both the national and international press have closely followed the public outrage and tepid response from government officials, turning out in full force to see the accused men in court on Monday. The swarm of journalists prompted a local judge to not only ban reporters from the courtroom, but also prohibit anyone from covering the trial. Brooke talks with New York Times reporter Niharika Mandhana about the repercussions of the ban, and about why the government would keep the trial off the public record. 

Tinariwen - Walla Illa

As China's only national TV network, CCTV isn't just the domestic mouthpiece of the Chinese Communist Party; it's also a global for-profit corporation with over 1.2 billion viewers worldwide. Ying Zhu, a professor at the City University of New York, sits down with Brooke to talk about her groundbreaking new book, Two Billion Eyes: The Story of China Central Television.

B. Fleischmann - Lemmings

When talking about China, we often try to fix points that help us understand the country’s seemingly strange and contradictory politics. We retell certain types of stories about China, framing the experience of Chinese people in terms Americans can easily relate to. After watching a short clip from High Tech, Low Life, I was looking forward to watching the kind of David and Goliath story that Americans so love: a story of two Chinese bloggers or “citizen journalists” who defy government censorship while reporting on issues like homelessness and corruption the government would rather keep below the radar.  I wanted to walk away from the film with an “Ah, so this is the kind of stuff the Chinese government censors” and an “Oh, and these are the tricks outspoken Chinese citizens use to circumvent it.” But Stephen Maing’s film challenged my David and Goliath framing.

Chinese censorship is nothing new. But recently the relationship between censor and dissident has grown more complicated as the government comes to accept that social media is no longer something it can simply take away from Chinese citizens. Brooke speaks with Slate's Jacob Weisberg, who recently traveled to China and spoke with some tech-savvy new dissidents.

Lit - My Own Worst Enemy

The Iranian government is set to launch a "Halal Internet" this spring as an alternative to the greater World Wide Web. Bob speaks to Fast Company reporter Neal Ungerleider about the most ambitious attempt by a government to censor the internet since China's "Great Firewall."

Quantic and His Combo Barbaro - Cancao Do Deserto

Last week, public outrage forced congress to table some bills backed by Hollywood lobbyists that would have barred access to sites accused of piracy. But Hollywood’s influence extends well beyond the US Congress. Bob talks to Rainey Reitman of the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which has created a website called Global Chokepoints that tracks pending or existing legislation worldwide (often pushed by the US and Hollywood) that would kick people or websites off the internet.

Dan Bull & Friends - SOPA Cabana

This week we re-ran a 2010 interview between Bob and B.R. Myers about the near omnipotence of North Korea's propaganda machine. Citizens, according to Myers, had little access to international news under Kim Jong-il. Unsurprisingly, the tradition continues under his son -- but here's a case where government censorship appears pointless and reflexive.

This week the government advisory board overseen by the National Institutes of Health asked two science journals to redact details of a new study about the bird flu virus. The government’s worried that, in the wrong hands, the research could be used to cause a pandemic. Bruce Alberts, the editor of Science talks to Bob about why he’s complying – for now – with the government’s request.

tUnE-yArDs - Doorstep

When early film legend George Méliès made 1899's L'Affair Dreyfus, a movie about the controversial Dreyfus Affair in France, it inspired riots. The topic was so dangerous for so long in France that the film was banned for decades and wasn't aired again in the country until the 1970s. Brooke speaks with writer Susan Daitch, who wrote Paper Conspiracies, a novel about the impact of the Dreyfus Affair and the Méliès film.