MIDEAST: Where Freelance Means Abandoned

Sitting by the hospital bed of freelance photographer Mohammed Othman, Ashraf Abu Amrah knows that nobody owns a freelance journalist from Gaza who gets injured, or dies.

EL SALVADOR: Radio Station under Threat in Mining Region

Manuel Navarrete fiddles with the buttons and adjusts the volume on the control panel at the Radio Victoria community radio station in northern El Salvador, while he reads over the microphone the latest communiqué in which social organisations express their solidarity with the station's journalists, who have received death threats.

Female Journalists Break Silence on Sexual Violence

On Feb. 11, while the world was celebrating former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak's fall from power, CBS television correspondent Lara Logan was being "mercilessly assaulted" by a group of well over 200 men in a dark corner of Tahrir Square.

ELECTIONS-PERU: Partisan Media Distort Information

Attacks, fear and disinformation are widespread in news coverage of Peru's election campaign, with the leading media outlets taking the side of rightwing Keiko Fujimori in her contest against Ollanta Humala for the presidency.

MEDIA-PAKISTAN: What Price Truth

When journalist Umar Cheema, 35, first heard of the death of his colleague Syed Saleem Shahzad, considered an expert on Al-Qaeda and Taliban militants, on May 31, he could not help but relive his day-long captivity with one of Pakistan’s intelligence agencies last year on Sept. 4.

Media War Blurs Picture in Syria

Since pro-democracy protests began over two months ago, Syria has been engaged in a fierce media war - with journalists arrested and international press banned from entering the country. This has severely curtailed the flow of information out of the country.

UKRAINE: Murder Case Reopens Can of Worms

Accused of being unfriendly towards journalists, Ukraine President Viktor Yanukovich has surprised the world by starting an investigation for abuse of power against former president Leonid Kuchma over the murder of an opposition journalist in 2000.

Social Media Takes a Far Right Turn

Social media is being heralded as a revolutionary weapon for the empowerment of discriminated groups such as migrants. But so far it is the xenophobic far right that has made the most of it.

EUROPE: Media Complicit in Rise of Xenophobia

As European leaders increasingly question the concept of Europe without borders and follow each other in announcing the end of multiculturalism, the media response has been mostly to present migrants as destabilising Europe’s labour markets and welfare states.

World in the Throes of a Human Rights Revolution, Says Amnesty

The growing demands for democratic reforms spreading across the Middle East and North Africa - along with the dramatic rise of social media networks - have triggered "a human rights revolution on the threshold of a historic change", says Amnesty International (AI).

MEDIA: Uniting in the Face Of “Unnatural” Disasters

"In my opinion, there is no such thing as a natural disaster," says Sylvia Richardson, a volunteer broadcaster, mother of two, assistant librarian, and the new vice president of the North American region of the World Association of Community Radio Broadcasters (AMARC).

Flagged for Removal: Online Censorship on the Rise

The shutdown was surprisingly swift and almost total. In the midst of a popular revolution – one that was blogged, YouTubed, and Twittered in minute-by-minute cyber blasts – the Egyptian regime tightened its Internet spigot in late January, choking the free flow of information down to a trickle.

MEXICO: Journalists Defy Violence, Self-Censorship

In Mexico, the country in the Americas facing the worst wave of violence against reporters, different journalistic initiatives are combating this dynamic, which fuels a tendency towards self-censorship.

SRI LANKA: War Long Over, Media Still Muzzled

It has been two years since the end of Sri Lanka’s decades long war, and life in general has begun to slowly edge back towards normalcy here. Not so for the country’s besieged media community, according to observers and journalists alike - reporting still feels hemmed in and muzzled, they say.

EGYPT: Press Freedom Comes With a few Red Lines

The collapse of autocratic regimes in Tunisia and Egypt has broken the state’s stranglehold on the local press, but journalists and bloggers must still be careful what they say.

THAILAND: Debate on Monarchy Tests Academic Freedom

History professor Somsak Jeamteerasakul has weathered a storm of insults since mid-December for doing the forbidden: he offered an alternative assessment of the most dominant institution in the country, its monarchy, in a forum at his university. Now military officials are dropping hints he could face more than just verbal attacks.

BAHRAIN: McCarthyism in Manama?

As the savage crackdown on the majority Shiite opposition movement drags on in Bahrain, King Hamad bin Issa Al Khalifa's military regime – backed by the hefty armed forces of Sunni- dominated Saudi Arabia – has moved from launching outright assaults on peaceful protestors on the streets of Manama in broad daylight into the murky waters of what experts are calling state terror, featuring all the old tactics of petrifying a population into submission.

BAHRAIN: U.S. Keeps Quiet over Repression

If President Barack Obama wanted to place Washington "on the right side of history" during the ongoing "Arab Spring", his reaction to recent events in Bahrain will likely make that far more difficult, according to a growing number of analysts and commentators here.

CHINA: Social Stability Puts Squeeze on the Rule of Law

There is no "Jasmine Revolution" in China, but the Chinese government might be creating the seeds for one through its elevation of social stability above the rule of law, some experts say.

OP-ED: Misunderstanding Bahrain’s Shia Protesters

Listening to the rhetoric coming out of Tehran, one might assume that Bahrain's Shia opposition is relying on help from its co-religionists next door. But, in fact, the opposite is true: the Shia opposition wants nothing more than for Tehran to stay out of the sectarian dispute unfolding in the tiny kingdom.

MEDIA: It’s Still a Man’s World, Especially at the Top

Long known as a "boy's club", the worldwide media industry continues to struggle with gender equality, with new research showing women are still underrepresented in the majority of newsrooms across the globe.