Watch part two

The Listening Post has previously reported on the very public shouting match over US President Barack Obama's healthcare reform proposals.

But the US media circus does not end there.

The airwaves have subsequently been filled with allegations that Obama is a secret socialist, a Marxist, a Muslim and, remarkably, a foreigner who has no legal right to be in the White House.

Jimmy Carter, a former US president, has even said that much of the grist in the 24-hour news mill has its roots in racism.

In the run up to high profile gatherings of the UN and G20, Obama went on an interview blitz across American news networks, with a very specific message to those networks and their audiences. 

Is the US president's issue with the 24-hour news cycle just politics or something that could be more dangerous?

Revisiting Iran

The Listening Post's Simon Ostrovsky reports on the Iranian citizen journalists desperately trying to keep their political movement alive and on some of the things the government in Tehran is doing to counter them and keep its hold on power.

Iran's contested June election galvanised hundreds of thousands of people to come out onto the streets to protest in the first outpouring of this scale since the Islamic revolution.

At the time, new media mechanisms such as Twitter and Facebook were given much of the credit.

But what happened next was a familiar story of arrests and detentions of protestors and journalists.

Accusations of torture and even rape were made against the security forces and The Listening Post thought this would be a good time to take another look at Iran.