BENGHAZI (AP) – Libya's rebels have launched their first homegrown satellite TV station, trying to counter the regime's powerful media machine, which churns out Muammar Gaddafi's message, depicts the opposition as terrorists and drums up patriotic fervor by beaming images of burning buildings hit by NATO strikes.

Libya Alhurra, or “Free Libya,” began broadcasting Monday night, a major step in the rebels' attempts to get its message to the Libyan public, whose main source of information on the crisis roiling their country has been Gaddafi's TV and radio.
Thousands of Libyans waving flags gathered in a public square in the rebel stronghold of Benghazi to watch the first broadcasts on a large screen, celebrating a newfound freedom from 40 years of media oppression.
“This is freedom. I hope this shows the true color of Libyan people and their real faith in a new, free Libya,” station co-founder Zuhair Albarasi told The Associated Press from the square, which has become a rallying point for the revolt against Gaddafi.
The channel was born out of an Internet video streaming site launched by Albarasi and fellow Libyan businessman Mohammed al-Nabbous, who since the uprising began in mid-February searched for a way to show it to the world and to the Libyans themselves.
They started toting video cameras to protests, jerry-rigged a home satellite system and turned to the Web. The danger of their effort was quickly made clear: Al-Nabbous, 27, was killed in Benghazi on March 19, shot under the right eye by a sniper as he filmed rebels armed with rocket launchers preparing to confront Gaddafi's tanks as they approached the city. Benghazi was saved that day by the first international airstrikes.
Still, their site continued, streaming video and audio reports direct from the battle front, including audio of fighters and the sounds of whizzing bullets and whooshes of rocket launchers. It also hosts a chat room that draws Libyans inside and outside the country as well as sympathetic foreigners, in English and Arabic.
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