Global Journalist

Pakistan has reached a milestone for democracy. For the first time, the country has transferred power from one democratically elected government to another. Voters on Saturday rejected the incumbent party and picked the party led by former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif.

The editorial cartoon is a dependable measure of press freedom in a given country. As advocates point out, a cartoonist cannot work when there is no freedom of speech and opinion. Two cases illustrate the point.

In the early months of the Syrian revolution, editorial cartoonist Ali Ferzat was threatened and eventually attacked for drawing cartoons making fun of President Bashar Al-Assad. The thugs broke both of his hands. But crackdowns on the free expression of editorial cartoonists don’t just happen in dictatorships.

Western Sahara is nearly as big as its northern neighbor, Morocco, but in truth, this stretch of desert along the Atlantic Ocean may be Africa’s most overlooked territorial dispute.

Honduras has become akin to a war zone, since the 2009 coup that deposed the former president, Manuel Zelaya. The country of around 8 million people, bordered by Guatemala, Nicaragua, the Pacific Ocean, and Caribbean Sea, is among the most dangerous places on earth. 

In the past few months, a trio of documentary films and the feature film Zero Dark Thirty have given viewers an inside look at counterterrorism and covert warfare. The films coincide with a growing international scrutiny of drone strikes — a new type of targeted killing that’s been the centerpiece of U.S. counterintelligence strategy since Barack Obama became president.  

Ten years ago this week, U.S. and British troops took control of Baghdad. A tank crew helped Iraqis pull down an enormous bronze statue of Saddam Hussein in the center of the capital. The toppling became a symbol of victory over the dictator’s regime.

In a New Jersey park, there is a stone and bronze memorial dedicated to the 200,000 or so women from South Korea, China and the Philippines who were sexually enslaved by Japanese soldiers during World War II.

During the True/False Documentary Film Festival in Columbia, directors from around the world gather to screen their films and talk about their craft.

In the past decade, Pakistan’s media has become larger, more powerful and more independent. The number of private television channels has grown from just three state-run channels in 2000 to 89 in 2012. But the challenges to practicing journalism are also growing.