From WNYC in New York, this is On the Media. I'm Bob Garfield. And I'm Brooke Gladstone. Just before the regime of Hosni Mubarak was ushered out by the Egyptian military, he issued a stern instruction to his people, essentially pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. What he said was, don't watch satellite news.

His Vice President Omar Suleiman repeated the command,

Turn it off.

A satellite television stations whose main purpose is to fuel sedition

and drive away among the people

and to tarnish the image of people.

Only listen to your own conscience.

What they meant was,

ignore the evidence of your own eyes and ears,

your tweets and YouTube videos, your Facebook posts,

pay no attention to the coverage of Al Jazeera

and the rest of the world's media broadcasting from the square.

In the early days of the uprising, state media was offering fabricated accounts of Mubarak's great and powerful hold on his nation, downplaying the unrest.

Earlier still, Omar Suleiman even suggested that the demonstrators had been infected by foreign

notions.

It's not their idea.

It comes from abroad.

But despite the threats, the violence, the camels and horses charging, the Malatav cocktails

hurled, the popular movement proved an immovable object.

And slowly, the government started losing its grip,

even on the domestic media, as some journalists resigned from their comfortable jobs and joined

the protesters. Today, we received the news that the prominent anchor and senior correspondent,

...