For the Today programme, our boys in Basra are just doing good, building sewers and helping reconstruction. Media Workers Against the War takes another view.

London’s “left-leaning” newspaper props up Latin America’s most authoritarian government argues Joe Emersberger.

Media Lens looks at the narrow coverage of the Somalia crisis, and the media’s failure to draw attention to the West’s role.

Media Workers Against the War reports on the case of Sami al-Haj, recently released from Guantanamo Bay – and on the media’s near silence on the issue.

Texas-born Dahr Jamail was outraged that the US media were swallowing the Bush administration’s line on Iraq and so, with just $2,000 and no previous journalistic experience, he set off to find out what was really happening in the country. He talks to Stephen Moss.

Daniel Soar reports on a little reported trial of eight men charged with conspiracy to murder, on thought crimes, and on media frenzy.

Trevor Johnson investigates how British experiments in nuclear power generation in the 1950s were recklessly accelerated in order to develop nuclear weapons.

This is the executive summary of ‘A Tale of Two Englands – ‘Race’ and Violent Crime in the Press’, by the Runnymede Trust. The report analyses newspaper articles over a two month period, and identifies clear differential patterns in the way in which the press reports on violent crime.

Media Lens comments on the recent appointment of Roger Alton as editor of the Independent, and asks him why an important story about the lack of WMD in Iraq was never published.

Matt Genner suggests that there is clear evidence of a partisan right-wing trend within the editorial stance and news reporting of the national press, and that this stance is visible today in the opinions expressed by political columnists.

David Miller reports on the ‘Open Stormont’ campaign in Northern Ireland – and the lobbyists’ response.

The Campaign for Press and Broadcasting Freedom reports on a survey by the NUJ on the exploitation of young workers in media organisations.

Rupert Murdoch doesn’t even have to ask to get what he wants. George Monbiot reports.

Medialens questions Jeremy Bowen, the BBC’s Middle East Editor, on the BBC’s unequal coverage of Palestinian and Israeli deaths.

Media Workers Against the War see only bad news in the appointment of Roger Alton as the new editor of the Independent.

Nicholas Jones examines an EU initiative for news management which is already producing some agonised soul searching among Europe’s journalists.

Dan Glazebrook interviews the Independent’s award-winning correspondent Robert Fisk about Western media coverage of the Arab world.

Stephen Lendman considers the BBC’s reporting on Iraq, Afghanistan, the Balkans, Hugo Chavez, Zimbabwe and Robert Mugabe – and finds it wanting.

John Rentoul of the Independent is surprised that the figure of 1 million Iraqi deaths ‘arouses such little interest’. Medialens takes him to task.

The failure of the mainstream press to report accurately on the reasons for, and the devastation wrought by, the invasion of Iraq has had appalling consequences, write Media Lens.