Michael Paterniti relives the triumph of Al Jazeera's Egypt coverage with correspondent Ayman Mohyeldin:
Mohyeldin's first order of business was to go out and secure a vantage point from which to capture the action in Tahrir, one that would be good for live feeds. After a number of failed attempts to persuade people to open their well-perched patios to an Al Jazeera crew—the paranoia about reprisals was rife—he tried an eight-story apartment building, talked his way past the doorman, and caught the rickety elevator to the top floor. There, a door drew back to reveal a disheveled man, pot-bellied, wild-haired, wearing a Che T-shirt that read REVOLUTION. Behind the man lay a huge, cluttered apartment. "Who the hell are you?" he said.
"Do you want to make television history?" Mohyeldin had asked.
… As it turns out, the people may have been partly saved by that one Al Jazeera camera—placed by Mohyeldin on the balcony belonging to the man wearing the Che T-shirt. After the Internet was cut off, so, too, was the Al Jazeera signal. And yet that one camera, running off BGAN satellite technology and trained on the crowds below, beamed an almost protective image, an early powerful dissuasion to what many believe might have been an instant massacre.
The Dish 