Sarah Abdurrahman

Take a break from your earbuds and get a look at the new podcast that gleefully explores all the beautiful, complicated dimensions of Black life.

You've probably seen the declaration of privacy status making the rounds on Facebook. Trouble is, the post doesn't actually do anything. It's a hoax, and an old one at that.

As the situation in Libya continues to deteriorate, a look back at the people behind the Libyan uprising that toppled Muammar Qaddafi.

Back in September, OTM producer Sarah Abdurrahman, her family, and her friends were detained for hours by US Customs and Border Protection on their way home from Canada. Everyone being held was a US citizen, and no one received an explanation. Sarah tells the story of their detainment, and her difficulty getting any answers from one of the least transparent agencies in the country.

In 2013, OTM producer Sarah Abdurrahman and her family (all US Citizens) were detained for hours, without explanation, on their way home from Canada. We're revisiting her story today.

Al Jazeera America launched Tuesday with the promise of a more serious approach to news reporting aimed at U.S. television viewers. But the 24-hour news network, originally started by the Emir of Qatar in 1996, has some obvious challenges in America.

The Al Jazeera media network is about to launch a new American channel, but limited cable carriage and negative perceptions about the Al Jazeera name might make it difficult to attract viewers. OTM producer Sarah Abdurrahman goes inside Al Jazeera America to find out how the new channel is trying to break into the US media market.

We all claim to want privacy online, but that desire is rarely reflected in our online behavior. In a story that originally aired in January, OTM producer Sarah Abdurrahman looks into the futile attempts we make to protect our digital identities.

Johannes Brahms - Violin Concerto op.77 in D Major

Duck Duck Go is a small search engine based in Pennsylvania that is, according to Google at least, a Google competitor. OTM producer Chris Neary talks with Duck Duck Go founder Gabriel Weinberg, SearchEngineLand's Danny Sullivan, and a dedicated Duck Duck Go user about the site. Also, each of the OTM producers try Duck Duck Go, and only Duck Duck Go, for a week.

 

Theme from I Dream of Jeannie

We all claim to want privacy online, but that desire is rarely reflected in our online behavior. OTM producer Sarah Abdurrahman looks into the futile attempts we make to protect our digital identities.

 

Johannes Brahms - Violin Concerto op.77 in D Major

I had been avoiding watching the inflammatory video posted on YouTube that has sparked anger and violence in Egypt and Libya this week (I had no interest in giving the nonsensical film any more attention than it has already been getting). But we are a media analysis show, and here at OTM we started doing some of our own digging into how this little known movie by a guy in California managed to get the attention of people on the other side of the world. As part of that research, one of my colleagues asked me to compare the original English trailer with a version dubbed in Arabic. Clips of the Arabic version had been shown on Egyptian television, and we were trying to see if the translation was accurate. From the clips that I saw, the translations seemed fine, but what I discovered was far more interesting than an inaccurate translation.

One year ago this week, Libyan rebels took control of the capital city Tripoli, ending the 42-year rule of Muammar al-Qaddafi. When the Libyan uprising began in February of 2011, OTM producer Sarah Abdurrahman told us about Feb17voices, a project she was involved in to get information out of Libya during a media blackout. Last month, Sarah went to Tripoli to witness Libya's election and to meet the people behind the voices.

The song from this segment has no English title.  Here it is in Arabic: 

تعلى في العالي 

So this is pretty unusual.  I just got back to my hotel room and got a Skype call from John Scott-Railton, the guy behind @Jan25voices, who I work with on my @feb17voices Twitter feed...

Friday at Tahrir Square was intense.  The sun, the crowds, the emotion.  It was incredible to finally be in the center of it all, to be on the ground after having grown accustomed to ...

If time is money, then I think that dollars are not the only currency that we need to convert upon arriving in Egypt.  We also have to convert our time currency, throwing out our very...

One thing we planned to do while in Egypt was to go to the University of Cairo's journalism school to see how media professionals are trained and talk to the new generation of would-b...

Last night we finally got to meet Mona Seif, a 25-year-old Egyptian activist, blogger and tweep who spoke to OTM from Tahrir Square at the height of the revolution.  And as if her dig...

OTM has finally arrived in Cairo.  Words can't describe this city and the energy felt all around us.  Having never been to Cairo before, I can't say for sure if the excitement that I ...

Sarah Abdurrahman, producer for WNYC's On the Media, discusses her work as a Libyan American, trying to get information out of her homeland and connect the Arab diaspora in the wake of the pro-Democracy protests. She's been contributing to the @Feb17voices Twitter feed.