Al-Jazeera is not a new BBC World Service

Egypt has made al-Jazeera English. The Qatari satellite channel has been the “go-to” channel; it has had more reporters on the ground than the BBC and CNN; and it has used technology in ways that make Western media look like they belong to a different era. Newspapers from the New York Times to the Wall Street Journal have talked about the channel’s role in the protests.

And all this despite its broadcasts being banned in Ben Ali’s Tunisia and blocked in Egypt. Facing these constraints, the TV channel switched to social media like Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube. Its website posted Live Messages — audio messages recorded from phone calls placed by correspondents — on the ground, and used a facility called Scribble Live to get these updates online fast. The company’s English-language website has seen a 2,000 percent increase in visits, with more than 60 percent of that traffic coming from the United States.