Faced with an event of Berlin Wall magnitude on its home turf, the Arab media is torn over the uprising in Egypt and how to report it, if at all.

In the old days, the media's role was not so much to report the news as to "guide" the public, shielding them from "harmful" information or anything that might inflame their passions.

That ceased to be a viable option more than 20 years ago with the arrival of satellite television, especially al-Jazeera, and since then the internet has made it less viable still. And yet, large sections of the Arab media still persist in their hidebound ways.

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