And the nsa wants to know whos been naughty and whos been nice. When protests were played out across the countrys air waves and around the world. Domestic state media has been accused of back being the governments narrative and its decision to pull out of a Partnership Deal with the european union, as well as failing to tell a story about a protest movement demanding a geographic shift westward. That added to concerns about growing Media Censorship in ukraine as yanukovych struggled for power. Protests numbers were down played and the west was accused of furnishing the uprising. Moved into overdrive to preserve its relationship with its former republic and former ally. Our stage is kiev. The first big story to come out of the protests was the political one. The size of the demonstrations. The scale of political dissent over the yanukovych governments position over negotiations with the eu. Then came the media side of the story. At least 51 journalists, local and international, accused of beating them, and not a single arrest charge let a loan a conviction. That amount of journalists who suffered and beaten had never happened in the ukraine and nobody was ever punished. As the victims said the cruelty of riot Police Representatives increased when press representatives said please to not beat us. We are from the press. And their rivals said, i will show you the freedom of speech. It is difficult for me to say whether they were specifically targeting journalists put the police had a specific task to do that. Those who intentionally put themselves in danger and were down in the rallies, the police didnt differentiate between them and the protestors. They were beating absolutely everyone. The reporting of the story on ukraines state owned channel, persi nationalne, few ukrainians watch that channel. Like Corporate Media in the west they are owned by oligarchs. And divided in their coverage. Ukrainians are having more problem about whats coming out of moscow, beamed into ukraine. We had if same line about foreign interference, about money being paid to demonstrators. Nobody demonstrating for virtuous reasons. Pretty much the same line when he faced protests in 2011, 2012. It was all got up by americans or foreign money. Were seeing the same line again. If you live in ukraine, you know this has nothing to do with reality. Everybody should be aware that the russian audience actually learned what has happened from these media outcasts. Almost nothing has to do with truth. And thats how the russian population preceded the evidence from ukraine, without any fact or anything. There have been tense moments in the protest zone, telling them they should be ashamed of their reporting. Perhaps making the point most effectively, was the ukrainian reporter who interrupted the live feed to present him with an oscar, presumably for best performance in a supporting role. This story with the oscar is very interesting, because those on the streets have stressed constantly that these are peaceful protests, so they somehow needed to protest against the Russian Media peacefully and thats why they came up with this mock oscar presentation. It was brilliant especially as it was actually broadcast live on air. Now giving a mock oscar thats wonderful for us in media. It sends a message i guess to show the one side covering the story is better or worse than the other. I look at all of the coverage more or less and there are different agendas and different objectives. As russians and many ukrainians see it, they have objectives of their own that date back to the cold war. The toppling of a statute of Vladimir Lenin that russians saw as symbolic, actually symbolized some of the shortcomings of the foreign media on this story. In many ways it was a conscious reenactment of the toppling of the statute of saddam hussein. Which was a little weird. The agreement was about europe and then it was everything about the president and his legitimacy. Many people saw as a bit of a diversion. I have to tell you, i thought it was humorous. Who cares about a statute of lenin . For the west, this is some moment. This is the west projecting. This is not the soviet union. The soviet union is long gone. Toppling down of lenin is western media. Postsoviet world, while for the ukrainians lenin is something from the past. Of course there were some glorification when lenin fell down but definitely by the International Media the story is overdone. But thats what happens when the global media parachute into a story in a country they know little about. Perhaps the postcold war narrative wasnt any part of an agenda but what one seize as context one already sees as context in an international history. Time has moved on even though western journalists think they are back in ussr. Yanukovych is president of ukraine. Putin is president of russia. They have mutual interest, but ukraine given its troubled history is never binary. You are for us or against us, there is always a third way. One way or the other. The danger is depicting ukraine as a bystander, passive to its simply being torn apart between russia and the west. When you look at whats happening in the streets, russia hardly gets mentioned at all. There are real grievance against their president. Global village voices now on the News Coverage of the protests in kiev. Media has presented the ongoing protests in ukraine as one that pits proeuropean protestors against progovernment. United front. Dichotomies like this are always going to oversimplify what is a much more complex situation on the ground. The activists and independent journalists on the ground, were very involved in covering the protest, facebook followers that have covered the outbreak, independent outlets were doing Live Streaming online. So actually Civic Journalists and activists have been very, very instrumental in covering the protest. vo Al Jazeera America we understand that every news story begins and ends with people. The efforts are focused on rescuing stranded residents. vo we pursue that story beyond the headline, past the spokesperson, to the streets. Thousands of riot Police Deployed across the capitol. vo we put all of our Global Resources behind every story. It is a scene of utter devastation. vo and follow it no matter where it leads, all the way to you. Al jazeera america. Take a new look at news. Consider this the news of the day plus so much more. We begin with the government shutdown. Answers to the questions no one else will ask. It seems like they cant agree to anything in washington no matter what. Antonio mora, Award Winning and hard hitting. Weve heard you talk about the history of suicide in your family. Theres no status quo, just the bottom line. But, what about buying shares in a professional athlete . Time now for listening listening post news bites. The late jaing song thiek, all changed with his very public arrest, even before his subsequent execution, north korean watches, saw references to him removed, removed from official videos and mass deletion of almost the entire archive of the kcna website. Tens of thousands of articles that were published prior to october. Another 20,000 articles were reportedly removed from the archives of the rodon sin moon, the state newspaper. Deleting over 100,000 articles since executing jiang on friday, we have witnessed an unprecedented purge of both power and the press. Given the fact that such a small percentage of North Koreans can access the web, it is for the wider world for the peacock kingdom. On december the 15th, tv presenter naras al nuemi was shot and killed in mosul. She became the sixth journalist killed in iraq since october, fifth in mosul alone. A christian journalist working for the al ahad, two jowcialts from the sharkia television channel, correspondent mohamed were also killed in mosul. A member of the provincial council flat out admitted that officials were powerless. We recognize our inability to do what is necessary to make sure journalists are protect. We are not even able to protect ourselves. Cbs news once the network of legendary american joirnlts is taking journalists is taking a pounding for what it looked like on the nsa, National Security agency. Current Affairs Program 60 minutes. The reporter john miller did sai at the outset i once worked in the office of the director of national intelligence. But it wasnt quite full disclosure. He also worked for the fbi and the new york police department. Miller got access to nsa director keith alexander. But viewers hoping for hard hitting questions on the most intrusive Surveillance Program anywhere were left wanting. In 27 minutes not one voice critical of nsa was interviewed by cbs, we were told something new about the source of the original story, former nsa contractor are edward snowden. An ex second trin who cheated on his intrangs exam. An nsa expert who refused to be involved in the program called it a puff piece and chris hayes of msnbc tweeted that it was somehow worse than twitter led me to believe. Another video on their website in which they revealed the story wasnt even their idea. The nsa approached the network on it. We asked the network to comment but the network didnt respond. The New York Post said he is set to return to annal intelligence position with the nsa back where he belongs. A million nor weej answer had a fun friday night. They watched a program about knitting, then talk, then actual knitting. The killer ratings a knitting marathon, are the latest called slow tv. It started a few years back when norways public tv channel nrk, decided to broadcast credit railroad travel. Theres no story line no script no drama no climax. Since then norwegians have taken up a journey up the coast. It sounds boring because it is. But something about the tv experience has gripped norwegians. We have sent marcel la to watch, following images in the following report, warning, may be spoig. Be disappointing. Its a contemporary value, that it needs to be built on strong narrative. Family larsen. Which means you need some kind of a conflict. Im telling everyone im not happy. Under you need some kind of development to that conflict. Hopefully, you know, a climax thats really punchy and a revolution and something clear and concise and engaging and has kind of an arc to it. Unless youre in norway where people are tuning in to watch a ferry ride that lasts all summer. Minute by minute, second 50 second, broadcast live. This is slow tv in motion. A new television fad where, well, nothing much happens, really. Open sea. Nothing happens. Like this night. We had quite heavy fog for three hours. I think its boring. But boring in a very nice way. But of course you see mountains. You see people waving. Because this is live. People are coming in their boats. They are waving at us. Filming involved is not a great philosophical achievement. But its i think it can be many things and i think the gift of just sitting back and watching nature come at you, and move past your window from the television, i think that has a relaxing effect. Slow tv means a way of getting back to sort of the more calmness. You dont have the shouting that hundreds of other tv programs. You can walk into from the kitchen, you dont really miss anything, and its there. The same things happening when you come back to the tv. Take another look. Its just nature passing by most of the time. Its there. Its seefn. You know, its even, its like water. Its like the weather, its like the mountains. It just flows. Its just there. Well, it is slow. And its kind of weird. But theres something about it. Something about a break from the world that we live in today. The world of fastbreaking news, of accelerated information. Of facebook, of twitter, of a media world gone silly. And even when we want to slow down we can rarely think of television slowing down with us. Unless youre in norway where people gather around the tv set to wind down, as opposed to being wound up. And that, not only begs the question about why its happening but why its happening here. Well, slow tv started as a crazy idea in our Tv Department in bergen. Someone said, why dont we put a camera on the front of a train and just transmit the whole journey. And then everybody thought well, thats a crazy idea, of course you cant do that. We ended up doing it just to try. With what originally, that this would be a biggest interactive format but suddenly we discovered that people watched it the whole journey. Hundreds of thousands of people watched the journey from start to end. I do not think they sat down with postmodern analytical frame of mind, saying what can we do as a creaks reaction to this frenetic cowl, mind, zen, it wasnt that way at all. It was boring. This is absolutely nothing. Absolutely no meaning. There is this guy whose job is, really, his grownup job is head of the department developing slow tv. Thats his job. He goes to the work in the morning thinking slow things. Not so fast. For many, this man is pure genius. Thomas hellun is one of the brains behind the long haul tv snooze fests. There was an 18 hour broadcast of salmon swimming upstream then the sevenhour train ride, and let us not forget 30 hour long interview. So norways public broadcaster may be the avant garde weird and wonderful tv but keeps the rating up, while keeping the cost down. This is very, very cheap if you count out the number of minutes to produce the tv, its very, very cheap. Like the snail we have our house on back. We eat on board, we sleep on board and if time we are at work we make the time we are on board we make tv. We dont use very much time rig up and down but we use the time to produce actually hours of tv. Theres a lot of crews, lot of time, lot of man hours go into this. That could have been spent on producing actual content, which is of course autodebate that we have. Another debate we have. Denmark and sweden are producing highquality drama and we want that as well. But if slow tv is so wrong, then why do norwegians say its so right . It is not the first time we have seen this kind of tv in action. The log fire burn at christmas, its just that on norway they seem to have gone overboard. This year they broadcast a 12 hour wood burning session on prime time tv. A Million Viewers were gripped. Thats 20 of the population. Bob fires have something magical to it. And we discovered that when we transmitted the bonfire for eight hours. My daughters say that every time, when they find me sitting in front of slow tv, they find it intolerable. It hurts their accelerated heads. But i pay no attention to them. I just keep on floating with the boat. More Global Village voices now on the uniquely norwegian phenomenon known as slow tv. In many ways, slow tv goes against what is normally presumed a special recipe for tv. They have to happen all throughout the whole show and that is obviously difficult when you are watching a salmon swimming up the river. There is only so much that can happen. But thats the thing as well that keeps people glued to the television screen, you want to be there in case something happens. What does slow tv, formal, what makes it so popular . Norway is a very small country, four or five million people. And when the boat passes your village you get to go out and wave to the camera and watch yourself on tv. Traveling on the boat can be tremendously expensive. You can watch it live and for free on webcam. Timely, its been the big finally, its been the biggest media story of the year, and with christmas almost upon us, one organization has found a way to combine the two. Nsa meets santa claus. This video is a parody, santa claus is coming to town. The aclu has turned a cheery are christmas picture into a darker piece, whos being naughty and whos being nice . Weve made nsa is coming to town our video pick of the week, well see you next on the and now a techknow minute. San franciscos bay bridge, an engineering marvel, built to survive the worst earthquake country has to offer. How close are we to one of those faultines now . We are very close. This bridge uses three inovations to fight the forces of nature. Deep inside the bridges underbelly is a hinged pipe beam built to absorb horizontal movement. At its base, is a support structure, called a battered pile, they stand at angles, instead of straight up and down, to better handle movements. At the top of the bridge, are shear link beems, designed to flex and deform, instead of of the bridge tower itself. Where would you wanna be if a big quake hits . On the top of the tower of this bridge, will be one heck of a joyride, but it will be a safe one. For more information on this and other techknow stories, visit our website at aljazeera. Com techknow dont miss techknow sundays 7 30p et 4 30p pt on al jazeea america aam aadmi y fleeing the fighting. Aadmi y Thousands Seek Refuge at u. N. Missions in south sudan after rebels seize more territory. And the rebel leader has told al jazeera he wants to lead the country. Hello, live from doha. A member of russian punk group pussy riot is released from gaol. Antiprotesters disrupt before elections