When street protests ousted the Tunisian president, 26-year-old Egyptian Sabah first heard about it in a call from a friend who told her: "Switch on Al-Jazeera." The riots that overthrew Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali and shocked the Arab world, were swiftly caught by the Qatar-based channel. Before many others, it flooded bulletins with footage, streamed online and updated its Twitter, Facebook and blog sites. "I'm not usually interested in politics but it's hard not to follow events like these when they are glaring at me in my living room," Sabah, who quickly followed her friend's advice and turned to Al-Jazeera when the news broke, told Reuters. Al-Jazeera's correspondents are barred from several Arab states and it often draws scorn from Western governments, but since its 1996 launch it has mesmerised Arab viewers who once had little choice but state TV that spoonfed the official line. As events unfolded in Tunisia, a country where Al-Jazeera's bureau had been closed, the channel again innovated among Arab broadcasters by using mobile phone footage and social media. It no longer has a news monopoly in the Arabic satellite TV space. And some viewers say it treads a fine line between reporting and taking sides. But they stay glued regardless. "Al-Jazeera is like a media brigade," said Jordanian Maisara Malass, an opposition activist. "By its coverage of events it has helped far more than any other outlet such as Facebook to spread the revolution from one city to the other." From its very early days, Al-Jazeera stunned the Arab world with heated debates and tough questioning of Arab officials, until then virtually unheard of. It won broad international attention, and US grumbles, with its 2003 Iraq war coverage. Tunisia may prove another defining moment. Al-Jazeera was swifter than most to grasp the enormity of the protests that delivered what many Arabs thought impossible ��" an Arab autocrat hurled out of office by ordinary people. "This marks the maturity of Jazeera television as a political force that can play a role in changing political orders," Beirut-based analyst Rami Khouri wrote, saying that the channel's avid viewers "may want to launch their own protests". When Tunisia's Mohamed Bouazizi, who set himself on fire because police seized his vegetable cart, an act that spurred the protests, Al-Jazeera was one of the first outlets to broadcast pictures of his self-immolation. "Al-Jazeera's strength has been that it 'owned' the Tunisia story," said Firas al- Atraqchi, a former senior editor for an Al-Jazeera website and now at the American University in Cairo (AUC). "Others had to catch up and try and ride its coat-tails."
