Hezbollah took its struggle to Beirut's streets this week, but the group's been taking its message to the air for many years. Its vehicle is Al Manar, the TV station deemed a mouthpiece for terror by the U.S State Department. Reporter Kelly McEvers offers a rare behind-the-scenes portrait ...

Most would agree that the Saddam execution video is “watchable” in a way the Nicholas Berg or Daniel Pearl decapitation videos aren’t. But art critic Richard Woodward says it still looks too much like a snuff film, and thus helps cement his legacy as ...

How is Saddam Hussein’s execution playing in the Arab media? Depends on your sectarian filter. Arab media watcher Marc Lynch says that even the few outlets representing Shiite and Sunni viewpoints are themselves starting to come apart at the seams.

President Bush is dismissing calls for a troop withdrawal from Iraq, reportedly favoring instead a plan for troop increases. We consider the semantics of the “surge” debate with the American Enterprise Institute’s Frederick Kagan and Foreign Affairs Magazine editor Gideon Rose.

Almost every news outlet focuses some of its coverage on Iraq. But a new website is devoting itself entirely to news from that country. Ex-CNN chief Eason Jordan talks about his new project, iraqslogger.com.

Donald Rumsfeld, in his final hours steering the ship of war, admits he might have given the whole affair a better name. OTM weighs in.

A new study concludes that the British press toed the government line in the first month of the Iraq war. Study author Peter Goddard shares some of the findings. And London-based journalist John Pilger explains why he isn’t surprised.

Last month, Sunni-run TV channel al-Zawraa was banned by Iraqi authorities. After a few weeks, it returned to the air as an explicitly anti-Shiite pirate broadcast. McClatchy Newspapers correspondent Hannah Allam describes the civil war that’s playing out on the airwaves.

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This week, NBC started referring to the violence in Iraq as “civil war.” The New York Times cautiously edged closer to that terminology. NYT executive editor Bill Keller explains the editorial and political reasons for allowing reporters and editors to call it ...

With the midterm elections over, all eyes are on congressional Democrats, and their plans for U.S. involvement in Iraq. Party leaders talk a lot about troop “redeployment.” Critics respond that “withdrawal” is not an option. The media use the two terms interchangeably, leaving many confused about ...

Army Lt. Col. Barry Johnson observed last month that the number of embedded reporters in Iraq stood officially at 11, down from a high of more than 600 in March, 2003. The Era of the Embed seems to have passed – but at what price? Brooke puts the question to ...

Three years ago, hopes were high for the newly-liberated Iraqi media. But more than a dozen Iraqi journalists have been arrested this year for “insulting public officials” and “inciting violence,” raising the spectre of Saddam-era censorship and retribution. Bob talks to Simon Haselock, former advisor to the Coalition Provisional Authority, ...

When President Bush told ABC News this week that the Iraqi situation may indeed be reminiscent of the Tet Offensive, the media went wild. For many, it represented a turnaround for an administration that has consistently brushed off Vietnam comparisons. However, as Vietnam chronicler David Halberstam tells Bob, there are ...

Embedded reporters are fleeing the barracks in Iraq, leaving the burden of telling the story to the brave few un-embedded. But whereas Western reporters could once travel freely, they now rely on their Iraqi “fixers” to bring the reporting to them. Brooke tells the story of three of those fixers, ...

In 1971, a young air force sergeant in Saigon broadcast a pirate radio show from a secret room in a brothel and regaled his comrades with off-color musings on sex, drugs and rock ’n’ roll. After a mere 21 days on the air 35 years ago, Dave Rabbit remains a ...

We revisit the question with Larry Diamond, a former advisor to the Coalition Provisional Authority, argues to Bob that the term insurgency misrepresents the reality in Iraq. And Peter Galbraith, an American advisor to the Kurdish government, maintains that Iraq will never be a stable, unified country.

Apart from opinion columns and magazine pieces, news outlets tend to place any mention of civil war in the mouths of sources, or qualify it with phrases like “on the brink of” and “risks descending into.” Brooke asks New York Times Deputy Foreign Editor Ethan Bronner why.

The Associated Press revealed this week that its Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer, Bilal Hussein, has been detained by the U.S. military since April. Military officials say they believe Hussein has close ties to insurgents. The AP says “then charge him with something!” AP executive editor Kathleen Carroll speaks with Mark Jurkowitz.

Maher Arar is not a terrorist, according to a report released this week by a government commission in Ottawa. The document describes how Canadian and U.S. law enforcement blunders led to Arar’s deportation to his native Syria, where he was held for ten months as a suspected Al Qaeda sympathizer ...

After an investigation into U.S. propaganda efforts in Iraq, the Pentagon decided the Lincoln Group’s efforts were not illegal. Last month, the military again called for bids for a two-year, twenty-million dollar contract for help conveying its side of the story. Bob speaks with Lieutenant Colonel Barry Johnson, spokesman for ...