The American Society of Newspaper Editors and other media organizations are organizing "Sunshine Week" in mid-March, to encourage print, broadcast and online media outlets "to address the issue of a more open government through news coverage, editorials, commentaries, and editorial cartoons." The organizations are "alarmed by a trend toward secrecy at all levels of government." A similar effort, OpenTheGovernment.org, has been launched by dozens of organizations "to advance the

The "first permanent communications war room for Democrats on Capitol Hill," the Senate Democratic Communications Center, has been launched.

"The United States government's primary strategy with the Arab media has been to create its own outlets - the satellite-news station Al Hurra and Radio Sawa - at a cost of $100 million, rather than engage aggressively with existing Arab media," notes the New York Times, in an in-depth article on Al Arabiya, a privately-owned TV news station established as "a more moderate alternative to