The Broadcasting Board of Governors has chosen David Ensor to be the new director of the Voice of America. The former journalist, currently working for the State Department, will join VOA in June, replacing Danforth Austin.

As protesters take to the streets, the regime is using government-run television to hit back with sectarian propaganda. Bahrain TV blares from most corners of this island Kingdom -- in malls, restaurants, living rooms.

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.

On January 11, at Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s annual new year press conference with the foreign media in Jerusalem, Oren Helman was introduced to the foreign press corps as the Government Press Office’s new head, taking over from Danny Seaman, who had a rather torrid 10-year relationship with the foreign press.

Indian bureaucracy needs to take some lessons on public diplomacy from their Western counterparts, and the same is the case with Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's Office. With corruption becoming a key rallying point, the extra-sensitive PMO mandarins ensured that the electronic media was booted out of the onboard media from the PM's recent trip to China

In a post made to his Chinese-language weblog on April 15, Ezzat Shahrour, chief correspondent for al-Jazeera Arabic in Beijing, voiced his frustration with Chinese state media reporting on the upheaval in the Arab world this year.

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.