Media in Middle East & North Africa

Every comparison of French papers with those we receive from England makes it clear that the French and British publics get their news in very different forms, and that one or other press, more probably both, is habitually lying.

By visiting Prime Minister Erdogan, Obama is overtly reaching out to what Americans would call "moderate" Islamists. Going to non-Arab Turkey also appears to be an effort to separate US relations with Muslim countries from US policy toward the Arab world.

Half of all Indonesians and about 80 percent of Egyptians and Turks believe the goal of US policy is to expand Israel's borders. Few buy US claims that it supports a Palestinian state.

Earlier this month, newspapers here in Cairo carried front-page photographs of Clinton being kissed by Israeli President Shimon Peres during her visit to Jerusalem. Arabs saw in that a clear message. Ditto what she said – and did not say – about Gaza, Israeli settlements, Hamas, and human rights in Egypt. Many Arabs fear it's Condoleezza Rice redux. The Israel lobby's success in torpedoing Obama's nominee for head of the National Intelligence Council – widely reported here – underlines the perception of business as usual.

Over half of the adult internet population is between 18 and 44 years old. But larger percentages of older generations are online now than in the past, and they are doing more activities online, according to surveys taken from 2006-2008. Contrary to the image of Generation Y as the "Net Generation," internet users in their 20s do not dominate every aspect of online life. Generation X is the most likely group to bank, shop, and look for health information online. Boomers are just as likely as Generation Y to make travel reservations online. And even Silent Generation internet users are competitive when it comes to email (although teens might point out that this is proof that email is for old people).

what’s truly embarrassing is that none of the public affairs staff at the academy had any idea who Borat was. Shouldn’t we expect public affairs officers to have at least a passing familiarity with popular culture?

"All the software in Iran is copied. There is no copyright law, so everybody uses Microsoft software freely," said the secretary of Iran's High Informatics Council.

The Magen Abraham Synagogue sits at center of this photograph taken on Wednesday, Nov. 12, 2008, surrounded by the gleaming new skyscrapers in Wadi Abou Jmil, Lebanon - formerly Beirut's main Jewish neighborhood. One of Lebanon's sole remaining synagogues, this building was set for a restoration that has the rare blessing of all the factions in this divided country - but the global financial crisis has scuttled the effort for now, leaving the Magen Abraham chained, padlocked, badly damaged and overgrown with weeds.

Rabbis affiliated with the Israeli army urged troops heading into Gaza to reclaim what they said was God-given land and "get rid of the gentiles" — effectively turning the 22-day Israeli intervention into a religious war, according to the testimony of a soldier who fought in Gaza.

Sarit Michaeli of the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem thinks that the public release of the testimony helped spur the investigation. "There have been many cases where we have asked the advocate general to look into cases, and they drag their feet until it gets into the media."

Cell phones are definitely in, but cable TV is not regarded as crucial

are we seeing the death of Journalism? I for one, hope so, as it will mean a more profound change may be upon us.

What if it is the underlying structure and values of not just the news institutions but also the entities they normally cover that are eroding? What if the value of objectivity and the faith in any opaque structures are dying?

Such a transformation, a reshaping of credibility from objectivity to transparency, would have profound implications for every organization – corporate, non-profit and governmental – in our society.

For Mr. Halbertal, like for the vast majority of Israelis, the army is an especially sensitive institution because it has always functioned as a social cauldron, throwing together people from all walks of life and scores of ethnic and national backgrounds, and helping form them into a cohesive society with social networks that carry on throughout their lives.

Studies by sociologists in recent years show that women are becoming increasingly aware of how the law discriminates against them.

the news business as we've known it for generations is changing and will continue to change in ways we can't possibly imagine now.I accept that and even embrace it. Yet at the same time, I can't help but wonder how we can recover what is almost certain to be lost in this revolution: a sense of shared knowledge of our communities.

I think we're reaching the point when we need some technology that helps us filter, sort and make sense of the river of data that we swim in every day.There used to be something like that. It was called a newspaper.

I believe people still want what newspapers have provided: a sense of being presented with important, useful and enjoyable information, culled from many sources and thoughtfully organized.Like Clay Shirky, I don't know what online form that might take. And given the economics of the Web, it may be that nobody can make a living producing it.

commissioned by the Turkish General Staff and distributed in recent months by the education ministry. It is an attempt to counter what Turkey calls "baseless" claims that Ottoman Turks committed genocide against the Armenians in 1915. The DVD was sent to all elementary schools with a note instructing teachers to show it to pupils and report back.

"They're promoting discrimination, branding certain people as 'others' and teaching children to do the same. My daughter will not be part of this enmity."

"We teach children who our enemies are and which countries tried to divide up our territory, but we don't teach them about the Armenians. "So I thought this film was good, and objective."

ten conclusions that might guide a country's development of a culturally appropriate Internet policy

Do not spend vast sums of money to buy machinery that you are going to set down on top of existing dysfunctional institutions. The Internet, for example, will not fix your schools. Perhaps the Internet can be part of a much larger and more complicated plan for fixing your schools, but simply installing an Internet connection will almost surely be a waste of money.

Learning how to use the Internet is primarily a matter of institutional arrangements, not technical skills

Peretz doesn't seem to know what a blog is or to realize that it wasn't PBS that made me prominent, but "Informed Comment" and my daily commentary and reportage here. And, it generated lots of television, not just the Lehrer News Hour. I have been on ABC Evening News, Nightline, the Today Show, CNN Headline News, Anderson Cooper 360, Wolf Blitzer, John Gibson's Big Country (yes, on Fox), Keith Olbermann, Ron Reagan, the History Channel, etc., etc. Lehrer has hardly been alone among television journalists in valuing my perspective.Peretz has smeared Jim Lehrer, indeed, libelled him, along with Ray Suarez, Margaret Warner and Gwen Ifill (all of whom have interviewed me), and must apologize. Now.

Daily newspapers will become a thing of the past for readers in four Michigan markets, with issues being printed only three days a week in Flint, Saginaw and Bay City, and twice weekly in Ann Arbor. Advance Publications said it would close the 174-year-old Ann Arbor News in late July, and replace it with two new corporate entities: a primarily Web-based news operation, AnnArbor.com; and a printing company that will publish two days a week.