Watch part two

We start our show this week with a look at Yemen, which zoomed to the top of the news agenda with the attempted bombing of a passenger jet bound for Detroit. And 10 years since the handover of Macao to China we look at the implications for free speech there.

Yemen is an important story in an unfamiliar country that has the news media groping for information, insight and understanding.

The media spotlight started to swing towards Yemen on Christmas Day, when a young Nigerian man tried and failed to bring down an American airliner destined for Detroit. The Yemen connection was established when it was revealed that the would-be bomber had studied in the Yemeni capital, Sana'a, and an al-Qaeda website claimed responsibility for the plot.

All of a sudden, reporters from all kinds of news organisations were making their way to a place many of them had never been. But have the media got the story straight?

In part two of The Listening Post, Simon Ostrovsky takes a look at Macao 10 years after the Portuguese rulers of Europe's last colony in China packed their bags and headed home. Macao was handed over to China and for the Macanese the future was uncertain.

In the 10 years since the handover to the People's Republic of China the economy has boomed and so has the media with a proliferation of new newspapers and magazines - but most of them are supported by the government and that is a problem for free speech.

In this week's Newsbytes:

More from China as Beijing throws more money at state media. India's press council investigates allegations that media outlets are selling news coverage to politicians. The Committee to Protect Journalists accuse the Azerbaijani government of planting drugs on jailed editor, Eyunulla Fatullayev. Canada loses its first journalist to the war in Afghanistan and a group called Atheist Ireland oppose a new blasphemy law.

Finally, media junkies have had it up to here with reviews of the 2009 news year - but we're going to ask for your indulgence one last time. Jib Jab is an interesting outfit. Set up by a pair of brothers in their garage in Brooklyn, they broke the mould for animation based internet humour back in 2004, when their video of George W. Bush and John Kerry singing This Land is Your Land became one of the biggest viral hits in history. Their take on the 2009 news year is our internet video of the week. Click here to see it.

This episode of The Listening Post aired from Friday, January 8.