One step forward, two steps back. That seems to be the depressing pattern of Arab media these days. If my kids brought home a report card with such mixed grades, they would be grounded for a month. Unfortunately for Arab journalists, the stakes are even higher. We begin the new year with scores of Arab reporters, editors and bloggers languishing in prison cells across the region. Even more depressingly, in 2007 48 journalists gave their lives practicing their craft in the Middle East, the vast majority of them in Iraq, where, as of this writing, 207 journalists have died since 2003, the greatest toll of reporters since World War II.