When the U.S. Treasury Department announced in February that economic sanctions would be imposed on the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting, Iran’s state-owned broadcaster, it cited human rights violations as justification for the unusual move. “We will also target those in Iran who are responsible for human right abuses, especially those who deny the Iranian people their basic freedoms of expression, assembly and speech,” Treasury Under Secretary for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence David S. Cohen said in unveiling the restrictions, which also applied to Iranian Cyber Police and other institutions involved in monitoring the...

In late January, Twitter shut down the account of the Somali militant group al Shabaab, apparently for violating the Twitter Ruleagainst publishing “direct, specific threats of violence against others.” Less than two weeks later, though, the al Qaeda-linked group was back on the social media site with a different username – the latest evidence, say critics, that Twitter’s policing policy needs an overhaul to prevent use by groups identified as “terrorists” by the U.S. government. Al Shabaab’s first Twitter account, @HSMPress, was launched in December 2011. Twitter deactivated that account in January after it published plans to...

With the slogan ‘Changing Perspectives’ and a goal of presenting Pakistan to the rest of the world as a vibrant, modern Islamic state, state-owned Pakistan Television Network at the end of January launched a 24-hour English-language news channel called PTV World. Amid the fanfare in the launch, there was no mention that PTV World is the fourth such broadcasting attempt in Pakistan  – or that the previous three, all failed financially. The earlier failures may not offer much guidance on how well the state’s service will perform, though. Each was an attempt by a private broadcaster to build an advertising base that would...

When the New York Times revealed in late January that Chinese hackers had infiltrated its digital network, including reporters’ email accounts, reaction exploded on Twitter and other social media sites. People speculated that this was yet another example of China’s rising power in the world. But then there was this tweet from writer and reporter Charlie Custer, who manages the translation website ChinaGeeks.com. On the one hand, NYT hacking is a big story. On the other hand, is it? Isn’t this happening to most foreign correspondents constantly? — Charlie Custer (@ChinaGeeks) February 1, 2013 That reminded Howard French, the...

At 2 a.m. on February 9, the Indian government declared a curfew in Indian-controlled Kashmir.A few hours later, Kashmiri residents understood why: New Delhi had decided to execute Afzal Guru, a Kashmiri convicted in a 2001 attack on the Indian Parliament. Guru’s hanging was the final act of a controversial case that India knew could spark street protests by many Kashmiris, who claimed charges against Guru were weak, and that he was used as a scapegoat. So once news of the hanging and the strict curfew—which forbade residents from even stepping out of their homes—was delivered by radio, television, and the Internet, New Delhi cut off...

  James Foley was supposed to arrive by 4. It was Thanksgiving, and Foley, a freelance journalist covering the war in Syria for GlobalPost and Agence France-Presse, was going to meet his friend Nicole Tung, another journalist, in the Turkish border town of Reyhanli to catch up and rest for a couple days. But Foley never showed. “I was starting to worry after 6, 7 p.m., when things were very quiet,” Tung said. “By 10, 11, I knew that something had definitely gone wrong.” When she was finally able to get in touch with someone in Syria who had seen Foley (the witness’s identity is being withheld), Tung learned her friend had been...

More than a year after Myanmar’s authoritarian regime began enacting broad political reforms – including easing harsh restrictions on media — early euphoria is beginning to give way to caution and skepticism. Among the high-profile changes that have won praise from western governments was the announcement that a new media law would be drafted by a press council, made up of 28 non-government experts. Although the law would need approval in the national parliament, allowing civilian experts to propose how they should be governed was unprecedented in Myanmar, which was ruled for decades by military dictators..  It’s one of the...

  In his last year as pope, Benedict XVI made several moves that appeared aimed at reshaping his legacy in the Catholic Church.  First, the Vatican hired Greg Burke, a top Fox News commentator to manage communications for the Holy See.  It also cooperated with the Catholic News Service’s expanded television coverage of the Vatican.  And, in perhaps the least important, but most covered move, a Twitter account was opened in the pontiff’s name (@Pontifex, which in Latin means both bridge and pope). But none of these moves changed the fact that the Catholic Church is woefully out of date in the digital age of instant...

  By N G Onuoha | Minutes before the start of Kenya’s first-ever presidential debate on February 11, Al Jazeera East Africa correspondent Peter Greste prepared for a live broadcast from a bar in the country’s capital city, Nairobi. Outside, a parked satellite truck connected Greste to Al Jazeera headquarters in Doha, Qatar. Surrounding him were the cheers, laughter and chatter of a crowd gathered to watch the making of political history. “Doha told me that we’ll stick with [the debate] for a little while, until they go to an ad,” Greste said in a Skype interview. In fact, the channel brought the three-hour Kenyan debate to its...

In February, China Central Television launched CCTV America, an hour-long daily program broadcast from brand new studios in Washington, D.C. CCTV America says that it is trying to provide American audiences with news from an Asian perspective. However, some critics are skeptical that the network will be able to distance itself from the propaganda broadcast by its Chinese relative. Milos Balac, Annie Claire Bergeron-Oliver and Lesley Dong report.

When U.S. Navy Seals slipped through the dark into Osama bin Laden’s Abbottabad compound one year ago, the killing of America’s most wanted man on Pakistani soil set off a tidal wave of media coverage in both countries that helped shape public opinion and complicated already frayed relations between Washington and Islamabad The killing of Osama bin Laden became a media moment in both countries, though one with sharply differing narratives. U.S. media coverage featured triumphant fist pumping outside the White House, recreations of how the Navy Seals found their target, and TV commentators – especially those on the right of the...

China and the United States share a history muddled by mistrust. This is especially true today with respect to each country’s economic and political ambitions. The news media in one is influenced by its nation’s politics, culture and history in reporting on the other. Yet, despite these restrictions and sometimes-tense national relationship, the way that the Xinhua News Agency, China Central Television and the South China Morning Post covered the U.S. Republican primaries showed remarkable variety in their attitude towards American politics. This is an analysis of Chinese media coverage of this year’s Republican Primaries, from January...

When opposition leader and activist Daw Aung San Suu Kyi’s National Democratic League swept parliamentary elections in Myanmar early last month, it sent a message abroad: Myanmar is changing. The American and Chinese media, like their governments, appear to agree that those changes are for the good — but with different national frames. Only days before the landmark election, the Association of Southeast Nations applauded reforms in the country and urged Western nations to lift sanctions “immediately.” China, too, supported immediate action on the part of Western nations. The U.S. has responded by easing some sanctions, and leaving...

In Ethiopia, the government controls all domestic media and blocks websites critical of those in power. One tactic for keeping media in line is imprisonment; the Committee to Protect Journalists calls Ethiopia one of the leading jailers of reporters on the continent. Threats and intimidation have forced more than 70 Ethiopian journalists into exile, where some write political blogs – whose words can’t be read in Ethiopia. That leaves Ethiopia’s 82 million people almost entirely cut off from independently reported news. “Besides what the government provides,” said Seeye Abraha, a former Ethiopian defense minister and current...

It started with the peculiar death of an English businessman in a hotel room in the city of Chongqing. It has descended into an epochal political crisis that threatens the stability of a country on the brink of its once-in-a-decade leadership transition. Bo Xilai, one of the most prominent politicians in China and previously considered a likely candidate to join the nine-member Politburo Standing Committee, was removed from his post as the Chongqing party chief. His wife, Gu Kailai, is under investigation for the murder of the businessman, Neil Heywood. Emerging details of the death are becoming increasingly salacious, with Boxun, a...

Many loyal Al Jazeera English viewers worldwide are drawn to the television network because of its insightful coverage of last year’s Arab Spring uprisings – and its in-depth reporting from the developing world. Since its creation in 2006, the Qatari-based English-language channel has deployed its resources around the world to fulfill a goal of being “the voice of the global south,” though it has done so with a distinctive Western style. The tagline “This is Al Jazeera” echoes James Earl Jones’ signature “This is CNN.” One of its flagship shows, “Inside Story,” analyzes the news of the day by presenting the kind of...

As Vladimir V. Putin once again assumes the Russian presidency, the expectation in the Western media appears to be that Putin will set a markedly different tone from Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev—one that torpedoes Russia’s re-set with the U.S., and infuses the countries’ relationship with a Soviet-style tension. After the Cold War ended in 1991, a new era of reconciliation between the two two superpowers began haltingly under President Boris Yeltsin.  Then, the 21st century brought the first Putin presidency and with it old fears of the Cold War. The ascension to the presidency of his more diplomatic partner Medvedev between 2008...

A small group of men armed with AK47s and hand-grenades attacks a government held checkpoint on a road that leads into the Syrian city of Homs.  One of their charges, a 23-year-old mechanic named Fouad Khashan, is shot and rushed to hospital. He dies en route. This story and the accompanying video came from a report by CBS’s Clarissa Ward in early February. Such images have been playing a critical role in influencing American public opinion about the Syrian government of President Bashar al-Assad. So what then of the commensurate reports in Russia? Since Russia’s veto of the U.N. resolution to declare the al-Assad regime illegitimate,...

Eurozone countries formally approved Greece’s financial bailout in mid-March after weeks of negotiations. An integral part of the bailout deal was a bond swap in which 85 percent of Greek bondholders – among them French, German and British banks — agreed to a ‘haircut,’ or loss, of 75 percent of their original investment in Greek bonds. The bond swap overnight cut 100 billion euros from Greece’s 368 billion euro debt burden, but the bailout — Greece’s second in since 2010 — had heavy strings attached. Greece had to agree to severe austerity measures over the coming years, and to having its financial affairs...

CNN and its international channel pioneered global, 24-hour news in the 1980s, followed by BBC World News (1991), Al Jazeera (1996) and – since the turn of the century – a growing number of round-the-clock news channels broadcast to world audiences. Among the most ambitious newcomers are state-funded channels from two countries with restrictive media regimes: China’s CCTV and Russia’s RT (formerly known as Russia Today). Both the Chinese and Russian services have global, government-financed English-language channels and a growing roster of more targeted programming – like CCTV’s latest additions, CCTV Africa and CCTV America. In...

On May 1, 2011, President Barack Obama announced to the world that Osama Bin Laden had been killed by U.S. forces in Pakistan. One year later, Global Newsroom looks back at how the story was reported in U.S. and Pakistani media. The dueling narratives, with some sharply differing focus points, help explain the tensions the operation created — tensions that continue today in U.S.-Pakistani relations. Céleste Owen-Jones is a student at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. She can be reached on Twitter (@CelesteOJ). Sarah Alvi is a student at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. She can be reached on Twitter...

In 1997, journalist Elizabeth Rubin went to Acholiland, in northern Uganda, to investigate atrocities committed by a notoriously ruthless gang of guerrillas, the Lord’s Resistance Army. She spent five weeks talking with a Catholic school nun whose female students were seized in a nighttime raid by the LRA, with some of the students who survived that ordeal, and with former child soldiers and families of children kidnapped by the LRA leader, Joseph Kony, who, like the other residents of the region, is an ethnic Acholi. Rubin’s gripping story about Kony, the LRA and children recruited to fight for it spread across nine pages of the...

  Global state-funded television news channels like Al Jazeera, China’s CCTV and RT (formerly Russia Today) have proliferated in recent years — and now they’re expanding, with a host of new services that tailor the news to local interests. Al Jazeera, for example, has hired close to 200 people for an all-Turkish channel. RT now offers Spanish-language reports. And at CCTV, programs that debuted early this year include “Biz Asia America,” a daily business show targeted at the U.S., and “Americas Now,” a weekly newsmagazine for Latin America. But one of the busiest new markets for the global...

Pakistani journalist and author Ahmed Rashid has covered conflict in Afghanistan and Pakistan for more than 30 years. He describes Pakistan’s media today and the severe dangers that the country’s journalists face in reporting the news. Produced for Columbia News Tonight. Céleste Owen-Jones is a student at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. She can be reached on Twitter (@CelesteOJ).

Charlie Sennott has worked as a foreign correspondent for the last 25 years, traveling to over 15 countries including England, Israel, Afghanistan and Egypt. He’s also the vice president, co-founder and executive editor of GlobalPost. The website began out of the collapse of the newspaper industry and resulting closure of many international bureaus. GlobalPost currently has correspondents in more than 50 countries and has roughly 2 million unique visitors per month. Its goal is to bring original content from all corners of the world to the American public. Produced for Columbia News Tonight. Annie Claire Bergeron-Oliver is a student at...

Described as “the voice of the voiceless,” Mohammed Omer won a Martha Gelhorn award for his reporting in Gaza. Dalal Mawad sat with Omer to talk about the difficulties and challenges of being a freelance journalist. Produced for Columbia News Tonight. Dalal Mawad is a student at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. She can be reached on Twitter (@dalalmawad).

Syria’s 544-mile border with Turkey has long been a common path for illegal entry or exit. These days, that border has drawn a new group of illegal entrants to Syria: foreign correspondents covering a nearly year-old conflict that seems to grow bloodier by the week. As the civil war in Syria intensifies, it has become the only pathway foreign journalists can use to sneak in under the nose of Syrian authorities who are determined to keep out foreign press. Very few visas are granted to the foreign correspondents — which is why reporters from the BBC, the New York Times, CBS, and other news outlets have taken the clandestine...

For foreign journalists, the Arab Spring uprisings and their aftermaths have ranged from exhilaratingly accessible (Egypt), to mortally dangerous (Libya), to frustratingly off-limits (Syria). Since Syria’s violent uprising began 11 months ago, the government has strictly limited journalist visas. The relatively few foreign journalists who have managed to enter Syria on a formal visa are required to report at all times in the presence of a government minder. Those denied access have had two choices. The first is to sneak across the border from Turkey, either on their own or with the help of the Free Syrian Army. That choice has proven fatal...