The view from here is that Iran is a closed society with no outside (aka Western) news, information, or entertainment slipping in. Is it true? Or, are Iranians offered a variety of global views via satellite television and the internet? As America’s diplomatic stalemate with Iran becomes increasingly prominent in ...

Commentators in the Arab media are proclaiming Hezbollah’s campaign a great victory for the Arab world. At the same time, there aren’t many echoes in the Western media of President Bush’s claim that Hezbollah was defeated. But Beirut’s Daily Star opinion editor Michael Young tells Bob that popular support for ...

In other public opinion poll news, a recent Harris poll found that despite all evidence to the contrary, an increasing percentage of Americans believe Iraq had weapons of mass destruction in the run-up to war. Bob talks to Harris Poll chairman Humphrey Taylor about how the truth sometimes merely gets ...

More Middle East coverage this week… more charges of bias. Over the years, most news organizations have become accustomed to complaints from all sides in the conflict. But as Shankar Vedantam wrote this week in the Washington Post, studies show that the partisans who lob most of the criticism are ...

Al-Manar, a Lebanese satellite TV and radio network, has been must-see TV for many in the region looking for news of where bombs are falling…and where they might soon fall. It's also the self-described media outlet for Hezbollah. NPR's Deborah Amos joins Brooke from Damascus to discuss Al-Manar’s popularity and ...

Whenever news media turn their attention to the Middle East, accusations of bias – from all sides – are sure to follow. This week was no exception. But the story’s a little different than it’s been in the past, and bias aside, American media haven’t quite adjusted to the new ...

In Pakistan, a new television show on the popular GEO TV channel has sparked a national conversation about a set of laws known as the Hudood Ordinance, which, among other things, sentences adulterous women to death by stoning. As a result, the laws are under review and real reform may ...

Hundreds of Egyptian journalists filled the street in front of Cairo’s Parliament building this week and went on strike after a proposed statute kept open the possibility of prison terms for reporters who criticize the president, his cabinet or even legislators. Despite the outcry, the law passed mostly intact. BBC ...

As news of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s death spread around the world Thursday, the photo of his lifeless face was nearly impossible to miss. For U.S. and Iraqi security forces, the image of Zarqawi – dead, mounted, and framed – represented a decisive victory. But RAND Corporation terrorism expert Bruce Hoffman ...

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has broken a decades-old epistolary freeze with the U.S., but the White House wants no part of it. Meanwhile, an aide to Ayatollah Ali Khomeini has sent his own letter to Time magazine; it strikes a very different tone from the President’s. Washingtonpost.com columnist Jefferson Morley ...

In February, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld delivered a speech entitled “The Long War.” In it, he invoked the Cold War while at the same time laying out broad strategies to fight what could be a decades-long terrorist threat across the globe. How will these sorts of war-branding efforts affect how ...

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi is reputed to be Al Qaeda’s #1 man in Iraq. Much of that credit is bestowed by Jihadist websites, but the Washington Post has reported that hyping Zarqawi is a mission of the U.S. military, too, which countered with the claim that 90% of Iraqi suicide attacks ...

The New Yorker article about dealing with the perceived Iranian threat made waves not just in Washington, but in foreign capitals as well. Brooke joins washingtonpost.com’s foreign press watcher Jefferson Morley for a roundup of the headlines. And she speaks with Knight Ridder correspondent Hannah Allam, who’s been watching the ...

The research group, Iraq Body Count, issued findings recently that show the rate of civilian deaths rising each year since the declared end of combat operations. According to the group, in the first year violent deaths occurred at a rate of 20 per day; year two, 31; in 2006 to ...

Mid-term elections are starting to heat up and the press is in hot pursuit of themes around which they can organize their coverage - for example, "Democrats in disarray" or "Republicans mired in scandal." But those seem a little tired. So the media have been quick to pounce on a ...

Wall Street Journal reporter Farnaz Fassihi has just completed a three year stint reporting from Iraq. She's written front page dispatches, but may be best remembered for a 2004 personal email in which she described the near-impossible conditions for doing journalism there. When the email went public, it became a ...

CBS Pentagon correspondent David Martin this week offered a candid public explanation about why he pulled a story on Improvised Explosive Devices, or IEDs, in Iraq. Basically, it was because a senior military officer asked him to. And since it was very close to deadline, he did. Martin tells Brooke ...

Amidst the scores of Iraqis killed in escalating violence this week were three journalists, who were kidnapped while reporting on the Samarra shrine attack. It was a reminder that physical insecurity is still the biggest threat to a free press in Iraq. But it's hardly the only one. Brooke speaks ...

Last year, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas relinquished direct control of the state media. This week, with Hamas preparing to take over in Parliament, he changed his mind.

After days of violent protests over provocative political cartoons, the old familiar phrase - CLASH OF CIVILIZATIONS - kept roaring back. With two satellites dishes, seven or eight Arabic-language newspapers and a number of Internet magazines, Cal State political science professor As'ad AbuKhalil is awash in media from the Middle ...