How can the Obama Administration rebuild American public diplomacy in the Arab World? Engaging with regional media, reforming BBG Arabic broadcasting and reducing the military role would be a good start, argues Ambassador William A. Rugh.

Bettina Graf gets behind the scenes at Islamonline.net, one of the world’s most popular Islamic websites, giving an in-depth look at how the site creates and issues fatwas.

Muhammad Gamal argues for more academic and professional attention to the audiovisual translation industry, which is proliferating everywhere from mobile phone screens to stadium megatrons.

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.

American television news has largely abandoned the Middle East. Can international outlets like Al Jazeera English pick up the slack? Publisher and Co-Editor Lawrence Pintak on coverage of the Gaza conflict.

In such a crowded market, how can newspapers possibly resist advertisers’ demands to produce business-friendly coverage? Peyman Pejman puts the tough questions to editors of the UAE’s six English language dailies.

Jabbar al-Obaidi’s typology of the region’s media is a valuable contribution, writes John Measor, but imprecise analysis and failure to engage with existing scholarship undermines the work as a whole.

Hamid Dabashi gives “blood and bone” to the lives and predicaments of Iran’s filmmakers. Yet his conceptions of “realism” seem to be surrogates for aesthetic judgments, argues Farouk Mitha.

Massad’s work on Arab sexuality in literature and media in reference to Said’s Orientalism will no doubt promote fruitful discussions, says Stephanie Tara Schwartz.

Absent participatory government, the film industry became a key political battleground in the late French empire. Historian Elizabeth F. Thompson compares struggles for control of the cinema in late colonial Fez and Damascus.