TEGUCIGALPA, July 7, 2009 (AFP) - Using amateur videos and pictures from mobile telephones, young Hondurans opposed to the ousting of President Manuel Zelaya are uploading pictures to YouTube in what they call "tele-coup."

With media controls in place, national channels offer biased political coverage and frequently cut off all cable channels to broadcast their messages.

Some repeatedly broadcast speeches from the interim leaders who sent Zelaya away on a plane to Costa Rica on June 28, as well as pictures of days-old demonstrations by their supporters.

To counter the one-sided coverage, Zelaya supporters are uploading videos of protests, speeches by union leaders and clashes with the army.

"We call it 'tele-coup' because on the national channels you can't see the reality of what's happening," said engineering student Cesar Silva.

"Obviously if they cut Internet broadband we're dead," Silva said, adding that they use several servers to try to avoid being cut off.

Amateur video reporters have uploaded around 26 videos so far, Silva said.

The most popular -- called "Nothing's happening in Honduras" -- shows soldiers firing tear gas and hitting protesters, as well as bloodied soldiers and protesters (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OCzkJf2vVnU).

In the first days after the June 28 coup, several popular radio stations were initially pulled off air, including Radio Progreso and Radio Globo.

National radio stations are also regularly cut for official announcements.

Cable services do not broadcast Telesur -- transmitted from Venezuela and pro-Zelaya -- and CNN in Spanish was pulled off air after Zelaya was ousted and continues to suffer sporadic cuts.

Authorities briefly cut the TV broadcast of a soccer match between Haiti and Honduras on Saturday to play a message in which Catholic Church leaders insisted that there had not been a coup in the country.

The students decided to post images to the Internet when they had enough of the one-sided coverage, said journalism student Adriana Alvaredo.

"We're using word of mouth to spread news of the site, as well as leaflets at demonstrations. Although most people in Honduras don't have Internet access, we're doing it so the world can see," Alvaredo added.

In some middle-class districts, students take their computers onto the streets to show their neighbors the other side of the country's crisis.

Only 11 percent of households in the impoverished nation have computers, and 68 percent have televisions, according to figures from the National Statistics Institute in 2008. However, 70.8 percent of the population use cell phones.

During Sunday's protests, which saw the first two deaths since the start of the crisis, volunteers from "tele-coup" were among the first to alert foreign journalists to what had happened.

"There were few cameras but a lot of cell phones that recorded the material we uploaded to the Internet, Cesar said.