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FOR THE past few weeks, a parallel plot line to the revolutions in the Arab world has been playing out in the media. With rare exceptions, the largest American cable and satellite providers simply do not provide viewers access to Al Jazeera English, the cousin to the powerful Qatar-based world news network. AJE has launched a full-fledged campaign — including advertisements quoting, of all people, major US news figures — to convince cable carriers to open their programming. But most have declined: Burlington, Vt., is the closest city to Boston where viewers can see the network on television.

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AJE’s battle with the cable carriers is major news in the Middle East. Not carrying the network sends a message to the Arab world about America’s willingness to accept information, unfiltered, from the very region we spend so much time talking about. These television wars began not in Tunisia or Egypt, but in Iraq.

In the midst of the Iraq war, in 2004, the Bush administration devised a $500 million station named Alhurra, roughly (and ironically) translated from the word “the free one’’ in Arabic. Created on the false assumption that the Arab world had little access to information from the outside world, the goal was to provide a different worldview than Arab outlets such as Al Arabiya and Al Jazeera offered, or, as President Bush announced in his State of the Union that year, “to cut through the barriers of hateful propaganda, a new television service will begin providing reliable news and information across the region.’’ (Then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld used to verbally accost Al Jazeera’s war coverage as “vicious, inaccurate, and inexcusable.’’)

Nine days after President Obama took office in 2009, he sat down to an interview with Al Arabiya, the Saudi television network, to signal a new relationship with the Arab world while snubbing Alhurra. For the Arab world, what he said was almost secondary to where he chose to say it.

This battle over cable access must be understood as a proxy for a broader lack of understanding between the United States and the region. Cable companies have no obligation to run programming, but their silence to the question “why no access’’ is a judgment, understood by the Arab world as a value-laden decision about America’s lack of desire to hear from the Arab world about the Arab world. In fact, the events in Tunisia and Egypt have been masterfully covered by the station, a news heavyweight in most of the world.

While US news corporations scrambled to get people and equipment to the region, AJE was already there, at the forefront of documenting the Egyptian government’s atrocities and demise, so much so that AJE’s offices in Egypt were raided and its journalists detained. Indeed, it is slightly ironic that American cable outlets will breathlessly cover Egypt’s attacks on AJE, and yet their carriers will not provide access to the station itself.

My own carrier offers no fewer than four sports history channels and five providing variations of country music. Meanwhile, lacking access to American television, AJE’s livestream website has been viewed more than 4 million times, nearly half of that from within the United States.

It may be that, given AJE’s relationship wth the Bush administration, cable providers fear it is merely anti-American propaganda. But the remarkable aspect of AJE is how little its coverage of the Egyptian crisis has been about the United States.

Cable providers are supposed to be content-neutral; political opposites Fox News and MSNBC live blissfully near each other on the dial. Cable providers must also assume that viewers can decipher between truth and lies; they can also switch the channel.

Could the existence of AJE on channel 203 or, if lucky, 114, upset American viewers? Yes. No doubt, if I watched long enough, I would find viewpoints expressed by commentators on Israel or the role of women that I find objectionable. But that basically describes my relationship with most cable news hosts, yet there they are, night after night.

James Zogby, in his book “Arab Voices,’’ highlights how American companies such as Cisco, Starbucks, and ExxonMobil have made important contributions to public diplomacy by shaping and promoting engagement in the Arab world. US cable companies ought to do the same by bringing a major player in the Arab world to American audiences.

The events in Egypt, culminating in President Mubarak’s exit, are the beginning of an unpredictable narrative in the Middle East. American news outlets will return home. But, the story continues throughout the region. If only we could tune in live.

By Bill Rankin

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

Faced with complaints from a citizen watchdog group, Atlanta police will stop interfering with people who videotape officers performing their duties in public, an agreement reached with the city Thursday says.

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Jason Getz, jgetz@ajc.com Copwatch members are (from left) Jenell Holden, Connor Gillis, Marlon Kautz, and Vincent Castillenti.

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John Spink jspink@ajc.com "Commanders have made it clear that Atlanta police officers in the field should not interfere with a citizen’s right to film them while they work in public areas," said APD spokesman Carlos Campos.

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The settlement, which also calls for the city to pay $40,000 in damages, requires city council approval.

The agreement resolves a complaint filed by Marlon Kautz and Copwatch of East Atlanta, a group that films police activity with cell phones and hand-held cameras. The group has volunteers who go out on patrols and begin videotaping police activity when they come across it.

Last April, Kautz said, he pulled out his camera phone and began recording Atlanta police who were arresting a suspect in Little Five Points. Two officers approached him and said he had no right to be filming them, Kautz said. When Kautz refused to stop, one officer wrenched Kautz's arm behind his back and yanked the camera out of his hands, he said.

"I was definitely scared," Kautz, 27, said.

Kautz said that when he asked to get his phone back, another officer said he'd return it only after Kautz gave him the password to the phone so he could delete the footage. When Kautz refused, police confiscated the phone, he said. When police returned it, Kautz said, the video images had been deleted, altered or damaged.

As part of Thursday's settlement, reached before a civil rights lawsuit was filed, the city will pay Kautz and Copwatch of East Atlanta $40,000 in damages. APD will also adopt an operating procedure that prohibits officers from interfering with citizens who are taping police activity, provided individuals recording the activity do not physically interfere with what the officers are doing. The policy is to be adopted within 30 days after the Atlanta city council approves the settlement, and training is to be carried out during police roll calls.

"We commend the city for resolving a long-standing problem of police interfering with citizens who monitor police activity,"  the group's lawyers, Gerry Weber and Dan Grossman, said.

APD spokesman Carlos Campos said the matter had been referred to the Office of Professional Standards, and three officers were disciplined. The two officers who confronted Kautz -- Mark Taylor and Anthony Kirkman -- received oral admonishments for failing to take appropriate action. Sgt. Stephen Zygai was admonished for failure to supervise.

"Commanders have made it clear that Atlanta police officers in the field should not interfere with a citizen’s right to film them while they work in public areas," Campos said.

Also Thursday, the Atlanta Citizen Review Board sustained allegations of excessive force against Kirkman, who took the phone out of Kautz's hand. The board recommended to Police Chief George Turner that Kirkman be suspended without pay for four days. It also recommended that APD adopt the new standard operating procedure.

Copwatch began in 1990 in Berkeley, Calif., and other chapters have since been organized in cities across the country. Its goal is to protect citizens from being mistreated by holding police accountable. With the ubiquity of small hand-held cameras and cell phones, Copwatch members can begin videotaping a police scene at a moment's notice.

"There shouldn’t be anything wrong with these constitutional watchdogs keeping an eye on the police," said Emory University law professor Kay Levine. "Just about anything the police are doing out in the public, in performance of their duties, members of the public can see -- and therefore film."

Citizens should not interfere with police activity, however, and should be wary about compromising an undercover investigation, she said.

"Just about anything the police are doing out in the public, they should be comfortable being videotaped because they’re simply performing their duties," Levine said. "If some aren’t comfortable with it, it makes you wonder why."

Kautz started Copwatch of East Atlanta after he moved here about two years ago.

"We landed right smack dab in a situation where we saw police behavior was unacceptable," Kautz said, citing the controversial APD raid of the Atlanta Eagle gay bar. "We saw Copwatch as direct action we could take to increase police accountability in the city."

Copwatch members are trained how to behave when videotaping a scene, Kautz said. "It's important for us when we're out there to keep it together. We try to stay professional, as we expect the police to be."

Copwatch members get varying responses from police, Vincent Castillenti, 24, said. Some officers become hostile because they don't like the scrutiny, while others begin behaving less aggressively when they realize they're being filmed, he said.

Kautz said the intent of Copwatch is not to get police officers in trouble. "The hope," he said, "is that our presence will remind police the community is watching what they're doing and wants them to be on their best behavior."

T-Mobile delivers a few jabs and a big right hook to Verizon and AT&T. T-Mobile releases a few statistics and graphs from network tests in Atlanta and New York City.  Already having 4G available, T-Mobile completely decimates AT&T’s and Verizon’s current data speeds, which is no surprise. With AT&T having their IPhone and Verizon unleashing theirs, T-Mobile stays on top of their game letting you know they’re not only less expensive, and they’re also offering 4G right now. Although Verizon is coming out with 4G, as is AT&T, they do not offer it on their IPhones. T-Mobile’s data plans start at $10 with 4G as opposed to AT&T’s at $15 and Verizon’s at $29.99 which are only 3G.  Currently offering 3 Android devices that are 4G capable and having over 200,000,000+ customers that can  utilize their 4G network it’s clear T-Mobile is a very strong contender in this market.

Source: T-Mobile

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Originally published at Lifework by Amy Feezor