Boxes & Briefs

Capturing something as elusive as hypocrisy in a simple static infographic may appear daunting.

Not so for al-Arabiya – the Saudi royal family-owned station, which has boldly mapped the region's less than virtuous experiments in Islamic government, while simply omitting any reference to the most obvious of all theocracies.

The world didn't end on December 21. But SANA is tweeting from a different planet.

Here, the five most recent Tweets by the Syrian National News Agency:

#Syria: Christmas Day (Tues 25th Dec) and New Year's Day (Tues 1st Jan) are public holidays, bringing a disruption to some public services

For all its high-tech industries and self-promotion as a western-style democracy, Israeli public officials apparently still enjoy forms of entertainment that went out of fashion in the US with the end of the Jim Crow era.

Media commentators in the Arab Gulf and beyond are using social media to push the press there to be more aggressive in its Gaza coverage, as most major outlets tried to remain as circumspect as possible.