Rania Al-Baz, left, and Oprah Winfrey.

JEDDAH, 7 July 2005 — When the Oprah Winfrey Show called me 10 months ago for help in producing a segment about Rania Al-Baz, I knew that Rania would be hesitant. She had stopped giving interviews after being criticized in the local press for going public with the near-fatal beating she suffered at the hands of her husband, Muhammad Bakr Yunis Al-Falatta.

“Oprah is the most respected name in American television. She is known the world over for her open, fair and balanced view on different subjects. Judging from what I have seen on her show, I feel confident that if you can trust anyone in American television, it is Oprah,” I told Rania.

Convincing her to tell her story to the world was not easy as she feared that the story would be used to cast Saudi Arabia in a negative light. When I discussed Rania’s concerns with Oprah’s producer in charge of the segment, she assured me in no uncertain terms that the segment was about Rania and other battered women around the world and not about Saudi Arabia. The producer assured me that Rania’s story was being used as part of a show about battered women around the world and the aim was to encourage them to come forward and seek help.

“You are being given the opportunity to address the whole world. You can talk about what happened to you and how so many rallied around you and stood behind you. You can talk directly to other women all over the world who have been battered and tell them they don’t have to take it,” I told Rania. “Besides, as you have become aware, there is a perception in the West that this is normal behavior in Saudi Arabia. Your story paints a different picture,” I added. At the time, Muhammad Al-Falatta was in jail awaiting sentencing and certain flogging; divorce proceedings were already under way and Rania had custody of her children.

After Rania finally agreed and when it was time to film the interview, she took great pains to communicate very clearly at every opportunity that wife-beating was certainly not socially acceptable in Saudi Arabia and definitely did not represent the country or our religion. Time after time, over and over, she made the point of talking about the good in our country.

After the tapes were sent to Chicago, I received a call from the Chicago producer informing me that the tapes had arrived and that she was very pleased with the results. “Unfortunately we couldn’t get them edited in time for the studio taping with Oprah and the audience, so we won’t be using Rania’s piece for now,” she said.

In February I received a message from the same producer saying that Rania’s piece would be used after all — in a follow-up to the first segment that was originally supposed to feature her. “We will be taping in the studio around the end of March,” the producer said.

Last week, someone mentioned that they had seen Rania Al-Baz on Oprah. After immediately checking local listings for the repeat, I called some of my cousins and friends to tell them to watch. After watching the first 25 minutes about happy women in different countries, I was convinced that I had misread the television schedule, and that the episode we were watching was not the one featuring Rania.

This episode began with Aishwarya Rai, and then moved on to Iceland, its glaciers and hot springs. Icelandic talk show host Svanhilder Valsdottir discussed social customs while offering Oprah Icelandic delicacies such as rotten shark meat and sour lamb testicles. When Oprah began talking about Belgium’s justly-famous delicious fried potatoes and chocolates with another woman, I called my mother and told her that I was sure that this was not “my” Oprah episode.

“This isn’t the type of show Oprah’s producer told me about. Besides, Oprah is taking us around the world to different countries showing us how satisfied women in those countries are. It would be totally unbalanced and unfair to shift to Saudi Arabia to focus on Rania. It would be as if what happened to her is what our women most enjoy about Saudi Arabia. Her story is not a happy one, and wouldn’t flow with the others on this program,” I told her.

I was wrong.

Rania, swollen, bloodied and bruised, flashed across the screen moments later, as Oprah explained what had happened to her and followed it with the usual unfair and uninformed diatribe that American audiences love to hear about how miserable Saudi women are and how free and happy American women are.

The entire original interview with Rania (a copy of which I still have here in Jeddah) lasted 64 minutes. Oprah used three of those 64. In the 61 minutes that were not shown, Rania talked about how wonderful our religion and our country are, and she discusses women’s rights and their lives in Saudi Arabia in a fair and realistic manner.

Rania and I were used by the Oprah Winfrey Show to paint Saudi Arabia in an unfair and negative light. When I called the producer I had dealt with in Chicago for an explanation, the warm greetings and enthusiasm to speak to me that had existed prior to the taping had been replaced by a hurried and impatient attitude that clearly meant, “I don’t have time for you anymore now that I got what I wanted from you.” I was referred to the media relations department at Harpo Studios and from them, I received the following official statement:

“Rania Al-Baz’s story was always intended for inclusion in a show that examined the different lives of women from various countries. We feel her story was presented accurately and we hope that her courage in sharing it with an international audience will help millions of other women around the world.”

A typical response that, much like Rania’s segment, seemed to me to be superficial and rushed at best with little, if any, time spent saying anything of substance, neatly side-stepping the real issues.