With over thirty years of experience as a war reporter in Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, and Syria, Kurt Pelda is well acquainted with the terrors of armed conflict. In this podcast, he shares his perspectives on the war in Syria, challenges the propaganda emerging from the conflict, and shares his personal experiences of life on the frontlines of some of the bloodiest conflicts in recent history.

Alice Hlidkova reports on the state of the media in Iraqi Kurdistan, where the reality does not always live up to the ideals promulgated by those who run the autonomous region.

David A. Rousu argues that Iraq now qualifies as having a diverse media, despite some government ownership and occasional instances in which the authorities have used legal provisions against media organizations .

In an age of homogenized reporting, bloggers on both sides of the Iraq war are filling the void of personal coverage and challenging the narratives of war planners and mainstream media alike. Wayne Hunt traces this phenomenon with two case studies.

Middle East insurgencies are learning from each other’s media strategies, writes Contributing Editor Andrew Exum. Can the U.S. Military catch up?

Josh Rushing’s Mission Al Jazeera is cookie-cutter "celebrity bio" whose analysis of Al Jazeera and other Arab media developments relies heavily on other scholars, says Tom Scudder.

Steve Tatham makes a strong contribution to correcting the record on Al Jazeera, especially in the wake of the negative publicity directed against the channel by American officials after September 11th and during the continuing war in Iraq, says Laura Smith in her review of Losing Arab Hearts and Minds: The Coalition, Al-Jazeera and Muslim Public Opinion.

With Riverbend’s blog, no longer is the reader limited to news reports from major networks or White House press conferences: the blog phenomena and particularly that of Riverbend and her blogging peers represents an uncensored real-time account of war, politics, and the perils of neo-imperialism, says Alexandra Izabela Jerome.

It is perhaps ironic that the man who controlled the broadcast of his image with an iron grip was executed in one of the most widely watched news events of recent times, says Vivian Salama.

In this article, Nicholas Cull reviews the performance of the United States Information Agency (USIA) during the Gulf Crisis and War of 1990-91. He concludes by contrasting the effective US use of public diplomacy during this period with the problems encountered following 9/11.