media
On March 3, Judith McHale, Under Secretary for Public Diplomacy and Public Affairs at the U.S. Department of State, and Ambassador Mikhail Shvydkoy, Special Representative of the Russian President for International Cultural Cooperation, will launch a dialogue between Russian and American media professionals as part of the U.S.-Russia Presidential Commission.
Recent events in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya have been on the minds -- and on the screens -- of people around the world. News organizations are covering the events in innovative ways, and people have noticed. More generally, the role of social media itself in protests and revolutions is also being debated
The United States is considering a range of options to deal with Libya, including military action and sanctions. However, there's another possibility for Libya: an information campaign and the Pentagon has reportedly explored at the option of jamming Libya's communications so that Gadhafi has a harder time talking to his forces.
The Czech Republic is preparing to mark the 60th birthday of the launch of Radio Free Europe broadcasts in Czech across the Iron Curtain to Czechoslovakia. The broadcasts were a key factor in telling people under communism not only what was really happening in their own country but also keeping them up to date about events in the West.
Freed on February 23 after being jailed for five months, the first thing the 33-year-old activist did was join protesters on the streets, even before returning home to be reunited with his young wife, 1-year-old twin daughters, and 6-year-old son.
When Benghazi fell into the hands of the opposition a week ago, Saleh Zayani grabbed two sound mixers and a microphone and headed to the radio transmission building.
The Association for International Broadcasting (AIB) has expressed its concern at the continuing disruption to transmissions of a number of its members. Deliberate, harmful Interference has been noted to the satellite transmissions of Alhurra, Al Jazeera and Deutsche Welle since unrest began in a number of North African and Middle Eastern countries.
A YouTube clip mocking Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi’s megalomania is fast becoming a popular token of the Libya uprising across the Middle East. And in an added affront to Colonel Qaddafi, it was created by an Israeli living in Tel Aviv.