Being a business journalist has never been easy in the notoriously tight-lipped UAE. But will investors tolerate Dubai & Co’s culture of keeping quiet amid a global financial crisis, asks Contributing Editor Dana El-Baltaji.

In such a crowded market, how can newspapers possibly resist advertisers’ demands to produce business-friendly coverage? Peyman Pejman puts the tough questions to editors of the UAE’s six English language dailies.

Absent participatory government, the film industry became a key political battleground in the late French empire. Historian Elizabeth F. Thompson compares struggles for control of the cinema in late colonial Fez and Damascus.

Hosam El Sokkari, the man behind the BBC's move into Arabic-language television, insists the new channel will not be the British Alhurra. So why would the British public want to spend Foreign Office money on a channel in the Arab world? Co-Editor Lawrence Pintak finds out.

Al Jazeera English’s election night coverage had the feel of a local college TV station, marking another missed opportunity for the channel that has yet to live up to its potential to produce true borderless journalism, writes Publisher and Co-Editor Lawrence Pintak.

Over the last two decades an explosion of new private outlets has dramatically changed Indonesia’s media landscape, writes Publisher and Co-Editor Lawrence Pintak. What lessons does this hold for the Arab press?

Facebook made a splash when it attracted 70,000 members to a group supporting an Egyptian general strike. But were these committed activists or fly by night fans? David Faris on the politics of social networking sites.

A vanguard of techies and activists used blogs to change the face of politics and journalism in Egypt. But once a small town, Egypt’s blogosphere now resembles a sprawling metropolis with a less clearly defined center, argues Courtney C. Radsch.

Does high television viewing correlate with more materialistic values in the Arab World? Recent survey data suggest not, says Mark Harmon.

Media were at the forefront of Lebanon’s bloodiest infighting since the civil war, relaying the heated words of politicians while beaming out propaganda thick and fast, writes Contributing Editor Paul Cochrane.