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You hear about the rise of “citizen journalism” and it might occur to some as a distinctly American idea. The empowerment, the democratization, the individuality and (yes) the whole ‘American Idol’-maybe-this’ll-get-me-on-TV angle.

Like what Jose Antonio Vargas wrote in the Washington Post the other day:

Fact is, independent of the candidates, voters -- you -- are interacting with the 2008 presidential election at an unprecedented level because of the Internet, YouTubing, Facebooking, Wikipedia-ing, et al. So why not call yourself a journalist and cover the campaign, too? Whether or not we MSMers like it, the loose, undefined, evolving cadre of CJs are here to stay.

All this pounds home the thought that Citizen Journalism is as American as apple pie, right?

Well, yes, but there's more to it than that, as evidenced by the fact that Agence France Press has jumped into the movement.

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There has been some debate over the riots that followed the election of Nicolas Sarkozy as French president and how significant they actually are. The riots have been covered by mainstream media outlets, but if you are looking for reports from citizen journalists, you're somewhat out of luck. That's because, as Matthew Sheffield notes, only professional journalists can legally broadcast the riots:

The French Constitutional Council has approved a law that criminalizes the filming or broadcasting of acts of violence by people other than professional journalists. The law could lead to the imprisonment of eyewitnesses who film acts of police violence, or operators of Web sites publishing the images, one French civil liberties group warned on Tuesday.

The law – which was proposed by Sarkozy when he was Minister of the Interior and went into effect in March – grew out of the rise of something called "happy slapping." That's when "a violent attack is filmed by an accomplice, typically with a camera phone, for the amusement of the attacker's friends," according to Peter Sayer of the IDG News Service.

Suppression of free speech? Charles Johnson thinks so. But the rise of citizen journalism can be problematic: As I noted last week, the presence of self-identified citizen journalists, some of whom were also protesters, may have contributed to the police's decision to beat journalists at the L.A. immigration riots.

Have you been watching Al Jazeera English? What about France 24?

Yeah, didn't think so.

The cable news networks, after all, are hard to track down here in the U.S.: The former is available to most of us only online, and the latter runs in only a few U.S. markets.

That's a shame, according to Newslab's Deborah Potter, who argues that the networks offer stories and perspectives one can't find in American media.

"Newscasts on Al Jazeera English are dominated by coverage of the Middle East and Muslims. AJE covers stories that others ignore, and gives the stories everyone else covers much more time," she writes. Potter cites packages on Muslim refugees in Bangladesh and women opposing the enforcement of Sharia law in Indonesia as examples.

As for France 24, which seeks to "convey the values of France throughout the world," Potter notes that it offers "more stories from Africa and lots of serious talk about issues like whether Turkey should be allowed to join the European Union." That's not stuff you see much on the U.S. news networks.

Concludes Potter: "Maybe no one much cares that neither Al Jazeera nor France 24 is widely available to a U.S. audience, but they should. It wasn't that long ago that many Americans woke up to the reality that much of the world doesn't like us very much. If we'd been watching the news through their eyes, maybe we wouldn't have been so surprised."

The Skinny, Hillary Profita's take on the top of the news and the best of the Web, appears daily here on Public Eye and on the "Evening News" page at CBSNews.com.

On the Web, Borat-related news is still racking up mucho page views. What’s that? You’ve read all that you can handle about the faux Kazakh reporter and all the people who are suing him? Well make room, dear reader. Rolling Stone has an interview with Sacha Baron Cohen and he's not in character. Because that's how he's conducted every other interview during his Borat media junket -- as Borat. Several people have whined about that.

So, it’s kind of a big deal that he did the interview as himself. Rolling Stone certainly thinks so: “Sacha Baron Cohen - The Real Borat - Finally Speaks: In his only interview as himself, Sacha Baron Cohen talks about growing up kosher in London, inventing a new kind of comedy with Ali G and conquering Hollywood with Borat." (It’s actually not his only interview as himself – in 2004 Baron Cohen spoke with Robert Siegel of NPR’s “All Things Considered.”)

Cohen reveals to Rolling Stone the (long-awaited) philosophy of Borat: "Borat essentially works as a tool. By himself being anti-Semitic, he lets people lower their guard and expose their own prejudice, whether it's anti-Semitism or an acceptance of anti-Semitism. 'Throw the Jew Down the Well' [a song performed at a country & western bar during Da Ali G Show] was a very controversial sketch, and some members of the Jewish community thought that it was actually going to encourage anti-Semitism. But to me it revealed something about that bar in Tucson. And the question is: Did it reveal that they were anti-Semitic? Perhaps. But maybe it just revealed that they were indifferent to anti-Semitism.”

UPDATE: An astute CBSNews.commer alerts us to two more appearances in which Baron Cohen appeared as himself: YouTube has clips of old interviews with the real deal on The Daily Show and David Letterman, both discussing "Da Ali G Show." Enjoy.

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