2005-2014

DOHA -- There is no getting away from it. Al Jazeera continues to dominate the discourse, despite significantly improved competition (reflected in growing market share) from Al Arabiya and a step back over the past year from its past tendency to overly emotionalize, Fox TV-style, when framing the news. Nowhere was that more apparent than at the Fifth Doha Forum on Democracy and Free Trade at the...

Militarily, there was never any doubt that the US-led Coalition would prevail over Saddam's forces in March and April 2003. However, there was much more at stake than a mere demonstration of military might. The Coalition had told the world that it was "liberating" the Iraqi people; this had to be publicly proven. When Victoria Clarke, US assistant secretary of state for public affairs, issued her...

t seemed a mere coincidence that only two days after the airing of the CBS 60 Minutes on Abu Gharaib prison torture April 26, 2004, Margaret Tutweiler, the US undersecretary for Public Diplomacy, resigned to take a position in the New York Stock Exchange. Ms. Tutweiler's resignation was as low-key as that of her predecessor in the job, Charlotte Beers, who resigned in March of 2003 for "health...

Debate and discussion are at the cornerstone of any democracy. There have been many changes throughout the Middle East in the past year with the elections in Iraq, Palestine, and Saudi Arabia, as well as the demonstrations in Lebanon and the Mubarak Initiative. As the political landscape of the Middle East changes, so must the media that covers it. The media should report on these stories...

When Americans became aware that the prestige of the United States after 9/11 had declined seriously in the Arab world, many called for an intensified public diplomacy effort in the Middle East in order to reverse that decline. Reacting to that concern, the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which is responsible for US Government-sponsored international broadcasting, developed two new projects...

The nondescript redbrick building housing Alhurra's state-of-the-art television studios lies tucked between offices for Lockheed Martin and Boeing just outside Washington, DC. Although it boasts an arsenal far different from that of its neighbors, the location of the US-funded Arabic satellite channel, at the heart of the military industrial complex, is striking. After all, the $62 million effort...

NEW YORK (AdAge.com) -- Top newspaper executives put on brave faces at a series of presentations today, emphasizing their journalism, growing Internet investments, increasing interaction with readers and new advertiser venues both online and off. The brass, speaking at the 33rd UBS Global Media Conference in New York, also said again and again that they were controlling or cutting what costs they...

CHICAGO -- Nine months after New York Times Co. bought the service for $410 million, About.com is ready to explain to advertisers the virtues of sitting alongside 57,000 topics and a library of 1.2 million pieces of content. The site, a high flier in the dot-com heyday, is almost under the radar today. But market researcher Nielsen//NetRatings said About.com drew 29 million unique users nationally...

ISTANBUL, Dec. 6--An Iranian military cargo plane filled with local journalists crashed into an apartment building in the capital city of Tehran Tuesday afternoon, killing at least 118 people, according to state news agencies. The C-130 clipped a 10-story apartment building near Mehrabad Airport, located in southwest Tehran in an area of several sprawling residential complexes. The plane had taken...

When Jimmy Wales started the online collaborative encyclopedia called Wikipedia four years ago, he had the high-minded goal of creating a sort of digital brain that one day would contain the sum of all human knowledge. In many ways, Wikipedia, which lets anonymous users add encyclopedia entries and update entries by others, continues to reach that ambitious goal. It was rated the top reference...