But what to give the man who has everything? How about a $223 million contract to broadcast Australia Network, the government's overseas television station that reaches more than 34 million households in 44 countries throughout Asia, the Pacific and the Indian subcontinent.

Ensor spent 19 years with ABC News, covering the White House and then the national security beat. In 1999, he joined CNN, and he is currently working for the government in Kabul, Afghanistan, as the U.S. Embassy’s Director of Communications and Public Diplomacy in Kabul.

The State Department has secretly financed Syrian political opposition groups and related projects, including a satellite TV channel that beams anti-government programming into the country, according to previously undisclosed diplomatic cables.

The decision to cut Voice of America (VOA) Broadcasting to China has attracted a good deal of congressional attention, as well it should. While China has launched a worldwide public diplomacy and media offensive, the United States is looking at a greatly reduced international media presence if the projected cuts go through.

Britain should abandon its plan to cut funding for the BBC World Service or at least ring-fence some parts of it, including BBC Arabic, in the light of the upheaval in the region, parliamentarians said on Wednesday.

An influential cross-party committee of MPs has called for the cuts to the BBC's World Service to be reversed to protect its global reputation. The Commons foreign affairs select committee said the 16% budget cut imposed on the service as part of the government's comprehensive spending review had "long-term ramifications"...

The Broadcasting Board of Governors will receive $10 million under the compromise spending deal reached last week. President Obama effectively sided with the BBG over his own State Department in a funding dispute involving Internet circumvention work.

When CBS Evening News anchor Katie Couric addresses Tufts students and community members this afternoon as part of the sixth annual Edward R. Murrow Forum on Issues in Journalism, she will be joining a canon of prominent journalists who have been invited to the Hill to carry on the excitement for journalism to which the forum's namesake devoted himself.