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The fledgling TV news channel, under the wing of the state-run Turkish Radio and Television Corporation, is at the forefront of an ambitious effort by Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s president, to shape how the country is viewed around the world. With sleek graphics, English-speaking foreign journalists and funded from the deep pockets of the taxpayer, it follows the blueprint of Qatar’s Al Jazeera and Russia’s RT, formerly Russia Today.

“There has [for many years] been a need for a broadcast channel delivering the events to the world from a different perspective, which presents Turkey’s own viewpoint,” says Ibrahim Eren, head of broadcasting for TRT. Ankara’s growing influence, not least in Syria and the migrant crisis, had created the need for a station showing non-Turkish viewers “how we see the world”

foreign journalists whom he views as an extension of western influence over Turkish internal affairs

A Cairo prosecutor has ordered the detention of an Egyptian accused of altering photographs before sending them to the Qatar-based Al Jazeera news network and of belonging to a terrorist organisation

Hassan El Banna is accused of belonging to a terrorist group, an apparent reference to the Brotherhood, and of doctoring pictures to damage the image of security forces

A security source said his movements had been monitored before his arrest and that he had supplied Al Jazeera's Egyptian channel with manipulated photographs, but was not an employee of the channel. A judicial source said he was not a professional photographer and did not officially work for Al Jazeera.

it would be wrong to view Islamophobia as a strictly conservative phenomenon. Polling data indicate that 49 percent of Democrats hold unfavourable views of Islam. Also, Brookings Institution scholar Shadi Hamid has argued that US President Barack Obama, a Democrat, holds views that amount to “Islamic exceptionalism”. Hamid argues that Obama’s statements about Muslims suggest that he is “frustrated by Islam” and that he has bought into Samuel Huntington’s “clash of civilizations” thesis

American news media, including liberal outlets, have done a poor job contextualising stories about Muslims and Islam. A growing body of empirical research into American news media coverage of Islam reveals deeply problematic patterns - negative, stereotypical portrayals, almost no Muslim sources, and few mention of Muslims or Islam in the context of positive news. That American news outlets apply the “terrorism” description almost exclusively to Muslim-perpetrated violence cannot be lost on anyone paying attention

while denunciations of terrorism by Muslim groups generally go unreported, Islamophobic statements drive news narratives

Emad Shahin, a political scientist at the American University in Cairo, said the state media’s attacks on the head of state made the situation perfectly clear: Mr. Morsi represented a double threat as the first civilian and the first Islamist to hold the presidency. “This is a deliberate and well-orchestrated campaign to shake Morsi’s image, ensure his failure and frustrate the revolution,” Mr. Shahin said.

Ahmed Abu Baraka, a lawyer for the Muslim Brotherhood, said the issue was deeper than bias. “It is an incurable disease in state media that needs surgery,” he said, blaming 60 years of parroting the ideology of secular dictatorship.

Taghrid Wafi, a state television producer, said she and her colleagues were in “confusion.” “They don’t know who is in charge,” she said, noting that in some ways the military’s grip on the news media had loosened since Mr. Morsi’s election. For the first time, she said, she could interview activists who criticized the military for court-martialing civilians. “You know we don’t work on our own; we need approval for our guests.”

There is no filtering by keywords if a user chooses another country (e.g., United States, Canada) as their location even if they are physically located in an Arab country. - One anomaly we found when probing filtering by keywords is that filtering does not work if a filtered Arabic keyword is used together with another non-filtered keyword. For example, a search using the Arabic word for “sex” is banned, but using the Arabic term for “sex stories” is not banned.

We found no evidence of filtering of keywords in Arabic or English that could return results in other content categories. We tested keywords that could yield politically sensitive content (e.g., “democracy”, “freedom”, “opposition”), content related to violence and terrorism (e.g., “torture”, terror”, “explosive”), Web sites related to minority and religious rights (e.g., “Shiite”, “Baha’i”, “Christian”, “Jews”), and content related to women’s rights (e.g., “gender”, “equality”). None of the tested keywords were found banned.

It is interesting that Microsoft’s implementation of this type of wholesale social content censorship for the entire “Arabian countries” region is in fact not being practiced by many of the Arab government censors themselves. That is, although political filtering is widespread in the MENA region, social filtering, including keyword filtering, is not practiced by all countries in MENA. ONI 2007-2008 and 2008-2009 testing and research found no evidence of social content filtering (e.g., sex, nudity, and homosexuality) at the national level in countries such as Algeria, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, and Libya.10

the BBC updated their pages. With some rather diplomatic language . Israel: “Seat of government Jerusalem, though most foreign embassies are in Tel Aviv.” . http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/olympics/2012/countries/israel . Palestine: “Intended seat of government East Jerusalem. Ramallah serves as administrative capital.” . http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/olympics/2012/countries/palestine

"Most of the people who come to Tahrir already know what is going on there. We need to reach the people who don't know, and are getting their information from Scaf-controlled state media."

With no co-ordinators or hierarchy to the Kazeboon campaign, it is difficult to keep track of the number of screenings now taking place, but an online calendar of events used by Egyptian activists suggests dozens are happening across the country every day.

"There has been a consistent effort [by the regime] to discredit undermine and distort the image of everyone who supports the Tahrir Square protests," she says. "The Kazeboon campaign means you are able to reach as many people as possible and show that you're not thugs." "As the screenings are typically organised by locals, it gives it more credibility among the neighbourhood residents,"

As we can see from these estimates below, the volume of Syria-related tweets (as a percentage of overall tweets) appears considerably lower than the volume related to the uprisings in Egypt and Iran. The estimates were constructed using multiple published Web sources reporting on number of tweets for the observed events as well as total Twitter traffic over time, including Twitter's blog, Customer Insight Group, Mashable, the Sysomos blog, and a dataset acquired via Twapperkeeper.

The Iranian protests in 2009 marked the first time that social media let us witness this kind of protest in a closed society from the citizens' point of view. The world watched, transfixed, as the death of protester Neda Agha-Soltan was caught on video. Now, these kinds of horrifying images have become alarmingly common.

The revolution in Egypt was relatively short, fast, and explosive. The Syrian uprising, by contrast, has been going on for 11 long months. Certain moments have refocused the world's attention, such as the siege of Homs in early February or the deaths of journalists Anthony Shadid, Marie Colvin, and Rémi Ochlik. Otherwise, much of the Syrian uprising has tragically resembled, as NPR's Andy Carvin puts it, "the proverbial boiling of the frog." While Carvin and others have been devotedly tweeting about Syria, he acknowledges that the length of the uprising might deter some news coverage. "I could imagine editors saying, what's the new angle here?" he says.

Members of the Ennahdha party, the dominant group in the coalition government, were among those calling for renewed protests. Odalisque 2.0 by Héla Ammar, was part of the exhibition The movement's leader, Rachid Ghannouchi, said in a statement on Friday that he condemned all violence against individuals or property. Yet he also restated his opposition to "attacks on the beliefs of Tunisians" and of the need to protect "sacred symbols".

Rachid Ghannouchi, said in a statement on Friday that he condemned all violence against individuals or property. Yet he also restated his opposition to "attacks on the beliefs of Tunisians" and of the need to protect "sacred symbols".

The concept of national or sacred values is just a pretext to muzzle artists and creativity. These concepts can be interpreted in many different ways, especially the most restrictive, which will ultimately result in Tunisia having official art and dissident art

Only a day after the US-based watchdog Freedom House, in its "Freedom of the Press 2014" report that was released May 1, relegated Turkey from the league of “partly free” countries to the league of “not free” countries, Davutoglu exploded. Speaking at a joint news conference with Omani Foreign Minister Yousef bin Alawi bin Abdullah in Ankara on May 2, he said, “No one can put Turkey in that category. All kinds of opinions are openly voiced in Turkey. In this sense, the press freedom in Turkey is freer than some countries called 'partly free.'” If he had left it there, there would be no problem. But, he urged Turkish reporters to act against the Freedom House report: “I’m calling on the press and the intellectuals to display a stance against this report. We expect our journalists to reject this report,” he said, and alleged that “a perception operation is being conducted against Turkey.” The term “perception operation” is increasingly used by government officials and pro-government media to describe an alleged smear campaign underway against the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) government of Turkey.

in a manner that would further complicate the AKP’s image in the Western world, the pro-AKP mouthpiece daily Star drew attention to Freedom House President David J. Kramer’s “Jewish origin,” and also alleged that Freedom House is financed by philanthropist George Soros and Jewish lobbies. Mehmet Ocaktan, editor-in-chief of the staunchly pro-AKP daily Aksam (who is also a former MP of the ruling party), was very blunt. He wrote: “Half-witted Turkish friends of proven anti-Turkey foreign sources are quietly skilled in covering up anything good that has been done. For example, they grab as a salvation nothing but a scandalous Turkey report of the Freedom House that is financed by famous speculator Soros, who has made a billion dollar profit from domestic troubles he instigates in various countries, and [the] Israeli financial lobby. For one thing, the data about detained journalists in Turkey [are] old and almost none of them [are] accurate. For Freedom House, [which] always lists Israel among free countries, to put Turkey in the same bracket as Uganda, Bangladesh, Indonesia, Tanzania and Kenya is not only dimwitted but also an indicator of absolute ignorance.”

 “What I think would change the way people look at Turkey is if they unblocked YouTube, if they didn’t block Twitter. I think that’s what drives people other places to say, ‘Hey, maybe freedom of expression isn’t that great in Turkey right now,’”

Egyptian presidential candidate Abdel Fattah el-Sisi has warned newspaper editors not to press for freedom of speech and other rights.

said that demands for greater freedom jeopardised national security

Sisi also told the editors not to press for dramatic reforms in state institutions by exposing corruption or other problems and to give officials time to do their jobs.

The government has tried all manner of methods to mute what has become known as “resistance music.” It has blocked Web sites used to download songs and shut down social networking sites, which the opposition also used to organize protests and distribute videos of government and paramilitary violence.

lamping down on music in the digital age is like squeezing a wet sponge. Protest songs are downloaded on the Internet, sold in the black market or shared via Bluetooth, a wireless technology that Iranians have adapted to share files on cellphones, bypassing the Internet altogether. Fans have also made dozens of homemade videos, setting montages of protest images to music and posting them online.

“Music has become a tool for resisting the regime,” said Abbas Milani, the director of Iranian studies at Stanford University. “Music has never been as extensive and diverse as it is today.”

Israeli blogger Lisa Goldman contacted the former soldier via Facebook, who replied: "I don't speak to leftists."

"The horrible pictures demonstrate a norm of treating Palestinians like objects instead of human beings – treatment that disregards their feelings as humans and their right to privacy."

this dim-witted duo is only known because of CNN. As Aziz Poonawalla points out, two people do not equate to an entire community. The two of us represent a counter-voice that is not on CNN, because we are educated and are representative of most Muslims. For CNN, there is not a story in Muslims being normal.

It is a sad state of affairs when two lonely boys with an internet connection get as much airtime, or more, as legitimate news stories and community leaders. Unfortunately, these two, unlike the creators of South Park, are not funny. They are just in poor taste.