Media in Middle East & North Africa

The famous preacher prepared the story earlier this year and posted it on his website in May with questions that he asked visitors to respond to. "Think about these questions," he wrote on the website. "You will not find their answers in any book. They just need brains and imagination." Among the questions posted were those asking: Why did the Pharaoh order male Jews to be killed? What do you think was Moses’ political goal? Was it saving the Israelites or talking the Pharaoh into believing in God? Why didn't Moses call upon Egyptians to join his faith? The responses were remarkable because the majority linked the story of Moses to the current political situation in Egypt and viewed it as an incentive to rebel against repressive leaders.

The Moses story is believed to be one of the main reasons why Khaled was rumored to have been forced to leave Egypt in June. The website discussion was not welcome by state officials, unnamed security sources told Al Arabiya. A report by a state security officer about Khaled alleged the story was a means of arousing sympathy for Jews as well as attacking the Egyptian government.

Fathi pointed out that Khaled uses the latest technology in his program and has thus initiated a significant change on religious shows and stated that the program has received some of the highest viewer rates.

MetroStar Systems, a 75-employee tech start-up contracted by the State Department to bring a better understanding of the United States to the countries with which it has less-than-amicable relations. The company plans to do so with X-Life Games, an initiative that effectively wraps a U.S. history lesson inside a downloadable video game for a mobile phone.

The products of this initiative — so far, “Driven,” a car-racing trivia game, and “Babangar Blues,” a music-based role-playing game — are intended to “demystify” the U.S. to foreign audiences, starting with the Middle East.

Ironically, the trivia very much resembles the test administered to new citizens. I asked Manouchehri if it was really fair to expect an Iranian to know who Patrick Henry was. “The hope is that they’ll look them up,” he said.

Iranian gamers head to Europe to promote Tehran’s developers

Iran's government-run Press TV says: Titles produced by Iranian videogames companies include an Iran-Iraq war tank shooter, a platform adventure set in Persia, an adventure game where you play the role of a girl called Sara, a young student caught up in events during the early stages of the Islamic Revolution in Iran, and a role-playing game based on Iranian mythology called the Age of the Braves.

To those who Twitter, the reporter who investigates a story before offering it to the public must also seem tediously ruminant. On Twitter, the notes become the story, devoid of even five minutes of reflection on the writer's way to the computer. I can see that there are times —an airplane landing in the Hudson, a presidential election in Iran—when this type of impromptu journalism becomes a necessity, and an exciting one at that. Luckily, reporters still exist to make sense of information bytes and expand upon them for readers—but for how much longer? I worry that microblogging cheats my students out of their trump card: a mindful attention to the subject in front of them, so that they can capture its sights and sounds, its smells and tactile qualities, to share with readers. How can Twittering stories from laptops and phones possibly replace the attentive journalist who tucks a digital recorder artfully under a notepad, pencil behind one ear, and gives full attention to the subject at hand?

I went home after the lecture and—hypocritically, I admit—updated my Facebook status and my blog to declare how much I despise Twitter.

Twitter serves as a source of links to longer news stories.

“This a country where barbers used to do the job of doctors,” says Abdelmonem Said, head of Egypt’s al-Ahram Center for Political and Strategic Studies, who writes a newspaper column but does not consider himself a journalist. “We should not refer to [bloggers] as journalists unless they are qualified to perform the job of a journalist. Defending an activist in the name of journalism further complicates an already complicated situation.” Professionalism is the best defense for Arab and Iranian journalists; facts their ultimate ally. If everything written on the Web is equal, governments have an excuse to crack down on it all. And if journalist rights groups throw in their lot with political activists, it will be hard to make a case that jailed Iranian and Arab journalists shouldn’t be tried right alongside “cyberdissidents” advocating revolution and militants who throw bombs.

Hekmatyar did not define what he meant by "help,"

Ironically, he was the the beneficiary of $600 million U.S. aid during the Afghan war against the Soviets.