While the revolt turned civil war rages across Syria, a group of activists are working to broadcast a new kind of revolution on the country’s FM airwaves – Radio al-Kul... The station, which is based in Istanbul but is one of only a handful of opposition media broadcasting inside Syria, can now be heard in six provinces. Its mission is not only to expand its geographic reach, but also to reach Syrians from across the political spectrum.

One of America’s flagship weekly national news magazines, Newsweek, faced a Title VII Civil Rights Act gender discrimination case from 46 of its female employees in 1970. Despite that important case so many years ago, in 2009 a group of Newsweek’s female reporters wrote with dismay that not much had changed. 43 of 49 Newsweek cover stories that year were written by men, and, across America, women got only one byline at a major magazine for every seven bylines by their male colleagues.

For the last six years, the U.S. government has spent more than $24 million to fly a plane around Cuba and beam American-sponsored TV programming to the island's inhabitants. But every day the plane flies, the government in Havana jams its broadcast signal. Few, if any, Cubans can see what it broadcasts. The program is run by the U.S. Broadcasting Board of Governors, and for the last two years, it has asked Congress to scrap the program, citing its exorbitant expense and dubious cost-effectiveness.

Federal employees were told to identify U.S. stations but not to make offers of government-funded news to domestic media. With the controversy swirling over media reports that after a recent congressional modification in the 1948 Smith-Mundt Act, U.S. officials may try to target Americans with government propaganda, the federal agency in charge of news and information programs for foreign audiences told its employees that they can start identifying U.S. stations that may be interested in taking their programming but should not contact them specifically to market such programs.

These types of characters (or caricatures) of Americans abroad behaving badly have been around at least since the days of Mark Twain and Henry James. What's striking is how little, in some ways, the depictions have changed between the late 19th century and the present age of smartphone-wielding mobs stalking the "Mona Lisa," and beery, breast-flashing collegians whom Latin Americans refer to, with eye-rolling exasperation, as los springbreakers.

The 12th yearly ‘Chiranthana-UAE Exchange Media Awards’ were recently given to four Indian journalists working in the UAE’s print, TV and radio media. The four award winners were selected for their contribution to the welfare of the Indian expatriate community in the UAE, by airing their woes and grievances in effective ways that helped the poor and low-income sections of society.

Several popular Egyptian television channels said they will suspend entertainment programming on Friday so that viewers can join protests urged by the army to confront “violence” and “terrorism." In a joint statement, the channels said the decision was “consistent with the will of the Egyptian people and in response to the call [by the army] to rally throughout Egypt on Friday, July 26 against terrorism.”

Edward R. Murrow’s last broadcast on CBS occurred July 25, 1964, on “FAREWELL TO STUDIO NINE,” a 55-minute special broadcast on the radio network commemorating the closing of perhaps the most famous radio news studio in all of broadcasting, at least up to that time 49 years ago. Studio Nine, at 485 Madison Avenue in New York City, was the anchor studio-news center for CBS before, during, and after World War II, until the move of all of us in late July, 1964 to the new CBS Broadcast Center across town.