To watch part two click here

This week on The Listening Post, we look at the asymmetrical media coverage of the conflict in the Demoratic Republic of the Congo. Plus, the US military's raid on a Syrian border town that never made the headlines: why?

In the News Divide, we turn our attention to a subject that has been eclipsed in recent weeks and months by the US presidential election and the global banking meltdown: the conflict in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Despite being branded as 'Africa's world war,' a 'humanitarian catastrophe' and the human exodus of refugees that it has precipitated, the headlines in the Western media have been slow to emerge. We look at the disproportionate amount of airtime that General Laurent Nkunda and his band of rebels are enjoying thanks to their comparatively sophisticated public relations machine and how the media are largely buying into their narrative.

In part two, The Listening Post's Salah Khadr looks at the US air raid on Eastern Syria last month, and the way that story was covered. There are two conflicting narratives: Damascus says four US helicopters illegally entered Syrian airspace from Iraq and killed innocent civilians; Washington says the target was a senior al-Qaeda figure. The eyewitness accounts and amateur video footage shown on Syrian TV posed a lot of questions that remain unanswered by the Pentagon and ignored by the Western media. We look at the difficulties of differentiating between truth and propaganda.

In this week's Newsbytes: Israeli soldiers are put on trial for posting video evidence on YouTube of abusing a Palestinian civilian; the Pentagon launches TroopTube – a tool for families to post messages to soldiers on the frontline; Syria backs a new TV channel aimed at Palestinians; strikes are affecting the broadcast of Indian soap operas; and the spoof edition of the New York Times with the headline 'Iraq War Ends' is exposed.

Finally, click here for our Video of the Week, in which the animators at satirical website 23/6 take a dig at the latecomers who've just jumped on board the Obama bandwagon.

This episode of The Listening Post airs from Friday, November 21, 2008 at the following times GMT:

Friday, November 21 at 0130 and 2030
Saturday, November 22 at 0430
Sunday, November 23 at 0600
Monday, November 24 at 0530
Tuesday, November 25 at 0730 and 2330
Wednesday, November 26 at 0300 and 1000
Thursday, November 27 at 0630 and 1430

Share your views about this and many other topical issues - join our debates on the Your Views page.

To contact us click on send your feedback.

Watch Al Jazeera English programmes on YouTube.