I received an e-mail entitled “Thank you Oprah, But We’re Proud to be Saudi.” The e-mail dealt with a petition from a group of Saudi girls who went online to register their disappointment with the negative presentation of Saudi women on Oprah’s show.

Last week, MBC broadcast one of Oprah’s programs about women around the world; it featured women from many countries, each talking about something in her country that was different from American culture. Most women talked about society, culture, fashion, food and friendships. When it came to Saudi women, however, it moved to the issues Saudi women face.

The issues were: Not being able to drive, having to have male legal guardian and having to cover their faces. So far, so good; these are all issues Saudi women face and we’ve had endless discussions in the Saudi press about them.

The program featured an interview with Rania Al-Baz, the Saudi TV presenter who was battered by her husband several months ago; the Saudi press presented her case to the world. Every Saudi who watched the program was dismayed that the image of the Saudi woman, in contrast to all the others, was negative — as if to say, “Hello Everybody. I am a Saudi woman and I come from a country where the national sport is wife-beating!”

The number of signatures on the petition is now 2,317 and judging by the speed of the e-mail’s circulation, I fully expect it to get more.

This whole issue raises a number of points to think about. First, the issue of Rania has been used to portray the whole country negatively. Second, the media is not interested in what real people do — they usually concentrate on sensational stuff. Third, when it comes to our image abroad, we are so sensitive that we go on the defensive and most of the time end up attacking the Western media and eventually building our own walls to keep us separate from them.

Personally, I think it is now going to be harder to convince Saudi women that a TV interview would be good for her country’s image.

Oprah’s program is not the only offender. Two weeks ago there was a segment of “60 Minutes” featuring an interview with Osama Bin Laden’s niece. The negative comments Bin Laden’s niece made about Saudi Arabia enraged almost everyone who saw the program.

At a small gathering, my friends talked about making a program dealing with Saudi women that correctly presented them. One of them said, “I never see an example that resembles the women I know; it is always about how bad life here is for women. Why can’t it be a real life picture with the true colors?”

But back to Oprah, I have to say that I had several issues with this program. First of all, I am not very happy with how they used the Saudi example, nor am I happy with most of the American media’s reporting about Saudi women. Without fail, when Western media people come here to do a program about Saudi Arabia, they ask us for help in portraying women; they go around, talk to people, meet all segments of society — conservative, liberal and the in-between.

They go home and the result is inevitably and always dominated by the same image of totally black-clad women with the voice of the presenter in the background lamenting the sad state these women live in. I must say that I do not mind if the picture contains a variety of images and if the viewer is left to make up his/her mind at the end. But to start and end with black-clad women who are put there to signify oppression reflects a lack of objectivity. It is as if you’ve decided for the viewers and have given them your opinion.

I cannot forget one CNN documentary about Saudi Arabia; I thought it was good but it did have the usual flow. It began with pictures of the Kingdom and the commentator saying, “Saudi Arabia, Land of Islam and Bin Laden.” That was it for me. He set the tone of the whole episode and no matter how much he tried to aim for objectivity, the introduction made me feel that he was doing it half-heartedly and that he was unconvinced.

After all, this is a country with more than 20 million people and certainly if there is one Osama Bin Laden, there are millions of others who lead normal lives like almost everybody else on this planet.

Even Oprah at the end of the segment on Saudi women declared to her audience that they should be thankful they lived in America. If you are Oprah who claims to bring “reality and truth” to audiences, you surely owe them much more than a superficial look at the subject.

Arab News reporter, Essam Al-Ghalib, who was the coordinator for Oprah’s team when they interviewed Rania Al-Baz could not hide his disappointment at how things were done. He said that initially the producer contacted him to help set up an interview with Rania to be used in a program about battered women around the world. With this as the background, Essam convinced Rania to appear on that segment. Later, he was told that Rania’s piece would be used on another program.

In other words, the battered women of the world did not include a battered Saudi woman; rather a battered Saudi woman was presented as a representative of all Saudi women in a program about women in general. Why did Oprah think Rania is a representative of Saudi women? Why didn’t she look at the Saudi woman, Dr. Thuraya Obaid, who works in New York as director of a UN agency? How do we pick representatives and according to what criteria? As a Saudi woman, I cannot say that Rania represents me. I represent myself and each one of us has her own story; we have negatives in our lives and we scream our heads off about them but we also have positives in our lives and we are happy to have them.

If the story was about battered women, why didn’t Oprah present battered women from the US, Europe, Africa and Asia? From what I know, wife-beating is a serious problem in virtually every country. I could not help but wonder if we would let a Saudi rapist represent all Saudi men. I hope not.

What we have always heard is that journalism is about objectivity, balance and fairness. And as a firm believer in people’s right to know the truth, I send an invitation to Oprah Winfrey. Come and see for yourself what the country is like, to see the social fabric including both good and bad aspects. After that, she would be able to decide if this is really a wife-beaters’ country. So, Oprah, come and see for yourself.