Quick - what are the top most important topics for journalism education to be teaching today?

If you're South African, you might want to say - in the light of recent belligerent comments from those in power - it is this: "How to make a case for media freedom and self-regulation." You wouldn't be wrong.

South Africa's communications regulatory body, Icasa, hasn't had a good press for quite a while. Not that there's a journalistic vendetta against the Independent Communications Authority of South Africa. But you can't expect good news from an institution where recently replaced chair, Paris Mashile, admitted to parliament: "We fell off our horse".

Peter Laufer plays radio-host in a fun-workshop that tapped the views of Iraqi journalism teachers.

Imagine journalism classes in temperatures of 45 degrees celsius. That’s the experience of in Baghdad where power failures cripple classroom fans.

In March this year, the campus radio station at the University of Baghdad stopped broadcasting because a sand-storm demolished the transmission tower.

These, though, are the least of the problems.

The etv story is straightforward.

But you need to read beyond the headline for the SABC one.

(Items on Biz Community this week.)

Brisbane is a long way to discuss a debate in Africa over information. But it's the venue of the World Press Freedom Day commemoration on 3 May 2010, and UNESCO asked me to make an input. To this end, I drafted a paper, arguing for the importance (at least equivalent) of practical access to info in African conditions, in relation to the (largely unrealised) political right to information.