In the middle of last week, it seemed that the old cliché about the light at the end of the dark Middle East tunnel was being confirmed: the U.S. had successfully cajoled both Israel and the Palestinian Authority into beginning to talk again. Four days later, Israel's Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is discovering that the cliché has transformed into the bitter joke: it's not light at the end of the tunnel - it's the headlights of the oncoming train hurtling towards him on the same track.
EJC’s media development team has just published a handbook for reporters from Central Europe, covering development issues around the world. As they move from beneficiaries to donors, Central Europeans are now looking to the global level. There is a growing sense that people are more connected than ever: from trade and tourism to environment, health epidemics and international crime.
On Saturday 13 March, the Imedi national television broadcaster aired a mock news report stating that Russian tanks had invaded Georgia and that the president was dead. Aired at 8pm, the usual time slot for daily news, the nation's most trusted broadcaster (according to the last year's study by Caucasus Research Resource Center) offered its audience the worst possible case scenario of what might happen a week after municipal elections scheduled for the end of May in the country's capital, Tbilisi.
The fight for free access to information is being played out to an ever greater extent on the Internet. The emerging general trend is that a growing number of countries are attemptimg to tighten their control of the Net, but at the same time, increasingly inventive netizens demonstrate mutual solidarity by mobilizing when necessary.