Egypian Military Police Arrest Blogger
Reporters Without Borders is shocked to learn that Maikel Nabil Sanad, a blogger and conscientious objector, had been arrested by the Egyptian military police for allegedly defaming the armed forces in his blog.
Al-Jazeera aims to become Balkans news hub
The Al-Jazeera pan-Arab satellite channel says it will begin airing a Balkans programme in September, hoping to to establish itself as a regional news hub in the ethnically divided region. With powerful public television divided along ethnic lines across the region and dozens of private channels mostly focusing on entertainment, Al-Jazeera Balkans hopes to fill the void for a regional news broadcast.
Yemen shuts Al-Jazeera offices; journalists beaten
Yemeni authorities ordered Al-Jazeera's offices shut and its journalists stripped of accreditation on Thursday, escalating a week-long series of reprisals against the station that has included beatings, expulsions, raids, and death threats. The Committee to Protect Journalists condemns the government's decision to shut Al-Jazeera and urges authorities to reverse the order immediately.
Bassem Youssef: Egypt's Jon Stewart
On a recent afternoon, a film crew trains spot lights and a camera on a trim, bright-eyed man sitting at a desk. Armed with a phone, a laptop and an air of mock-seriousness, the presenter is rehearsing his lines - a series of wisecracks, delivered with brio, that target celebrities and politicians. This, though, isn't a set in New York City but an apartment in a high-rise in suburban Cairo, home of the host, Bassem Youssef.
#ArabnetME: Social media did not bring on revolutions in Arab world
The Arab world is in the midst of a historic transformation. From Tunisia to Egypt, and now from Algeria to Bahrain, Yemen and Syria, social media, especially Facebook and Twitter, has played an important role the uprisings that continue to sweep the region.The organizers of Arabnet, the digital summit that discusses the latest trends and technologies in the sector, found it necessary to discuss the role of social media in the Arab uprisings.
Revolutions are caused by human agency; not telecommunications technologies, scholar argues.
Most narratives of globalisation are fantastically Eurocentric, stories of Western white men burdened with responsibility for interconnecting the world, by colonising it, providing it with economic theories and finance, and inventing communications technologies. Of course globalisation is about flows of people as well, about diasporas and cultural fusion. But neither version is particularly useful for organising resistance to the local dictatorship.
MAP reporters seek editorial independence
Dozens of journalists from Morocco's official news agency demonstrated in the capital Tuesday to demand editorial independence, amid a push for pro-democracy reform in the kingdom. About 100 people took part in the protest, most of them Maghreb Arab Press (MAP) journalists, in a first since the creation of the agency in 1959.
Is This the End of the "Establishment Media' in the Arab world
If you are an Arab journalist who happened to have worked at some point with an "Establishment" newspaper or television channel (a media outlet which is either owned or backed directly or indirectly by an autocratic regime), then you must have noticed the remarkable resemblance that these organizations have with the regimes that support them.
