Politics have become so divisive in Lebanon that the national media council chief urged the media in January to curb "tense rhetoric" that could instigate violence among the country's religious sects, writes Contributing Editor Paul Cochrane. So what are the media up to? Are they guilty of fanning the flames?

May, 2007. Politics has become so divisive in Lebanon, on the streets and on TV screens, that the national media council chief urged the media in January to curb "tense rhetoric" that could instigate violence among the country's religious sects.[1] Lebanon was plunged into a power struggle on December 1, …

BBC Monitoring Text of report by Palestinian Ma'an News Agency website     Qalqilyah, 15 June: Armed members of the Al-Aqsa Martyrs Brigades, the military wing of Fatah, destroyed the Hamas-owned Al-Salam Radio for Children today in Qalqilyah.     The group told our correspondent that this act comes in response to Hamas's attack …

Larry Register’s forced departure from the US public diplomacy channel marks a low point for American efforts at broadcasting to the Middle East, an entirely predictable debacle which likely puts paid to even the slender hopes that the station might turn itself around argues Editorial Board Member Marc Lynch.

The Arab Broadcast Forum both intentionally and inadvertently exposed some of the obstacles that continue to plague Arab World television media, as well as the conference’s own shortcomings. But its ability to critically examine these things?despite some flaws?demonstrates that the Arab media is at least on the right track, says Abigail Hauslohner.

I hesitate to call myself a journalist. Technically, I am one, but I haven’t broken ‘news’ since the day I took up my position on Time Out in Dubai. Still, I take comfort in knowing that most journalists in the emirate are equally frustrated working in a media industry that ‘makes nice, not news,’ reports Dana El-Baltaji.

Alan L. Heil Jr. documents the plethora of new public diplomacy channels broadcasting in Arabic, including France 24, Deutsche Welle, and Russia TV Today, arguing credibility will be crucial to success with audiences in an increasingly crowded market.

Although recent changes in information technology, especially the growth of satellite television, have had an impact on Arab media, making national borders more porous, existing national political systems are still a dominant variable affecting the structure and behavior of Arab media, argues Editorial Board Member William A. Rugh.

By scrapping Voice of America in the Middle East, the US has both undercut its own public diplomacy interests and the interests of listeners in the region itself, argues Laurie Kassman.

Without a critical cultural examination of the multiple sides of the “Arabic” and “Arab” media terrain, the fervent attachment to the production of taxonomies to describe this terrain at a time of exponential transformation may provide little more than lines in the sand, claims Editorial Board Member Adel Iskandar.