A group of intellectuals and academics attended a forum organized by Asharq Al-Awsat, a sister publication of Arab News, in Riyadh recently to discuss Saudi-US relations after the Sept. 11, 2001 events from a Saudi perspective. In this, the third of a four-part series, Tariq Al-Homayed, the Jeddah-based managing editor of the paper, reports on discussions on the role of the media.

The absence of independence and professionalism is the hallmark of the Saudi media. This was the conclusion of Fowzia Al-Bakr, a visiting professor at Georgetown University who took part in a heated debate on press freedom by teleconference.

“We have to forget America and its cultural domination and focus on our own problems first,” she said.

Trenchant criticism of the Saudi media earlier focused on both these aspects.

Businessman and media personality Hussein Shobokshi had said that the Saudi media failed to represent the hopes and aspirations of its people and the state. Dr. Saleh Al-Aswad countered that the cause of the problem should also be sought in the negative attitude toward the media from the authorities in the Arab and Islamic world.

“We cannot blame the media and media professionals for the present predicament, because the dominant culture hampers its progress and its mission,” Al-Aswad said.

“Our media has become so full of excuses. It just repeats what others say,” said Dr. Ayed Al-Radadi, undersecretary at the Information Ministry. Elsewhere, he said, the media was part of the implementation of greater schemes and indeed could be used to achieve world domination.

“But we don’t have such media because we don’t have capable people,” he said.

The entire system of the Kingdom was to blame for this, not any single agency, according to Dr. Abdul Rahman Al-Shubailey, a member of the Saudi Information Council.

“What we have said about the information agency can equally be applied to social and political agencies,” he said, adding there was no clear policy for dealing with current events.

“What message does the information media wish to convey? We don’t know,” he said. “After the Juhaiman incident in Makkah in 1979, the second Gulf War and the internal criminal and terrorist incidents, it has become obvious that we don’t have a clear plan to deal with crises,” Shubailey added.

Fowzia had another important point to make. There were clear contradictions, she said, in the official statements carried by the local media. “The world accuses us of terrorism, and the charitable organizations have become distorted in their image.”

The world was ever ruled, she said, not by justice but by power.

Shobokshi was later to highlight a striking example of these contradictions. Official statements gave the impression of a strong friendship between the Kingdom and the US.

“But when we look at the pages of our local newspapers, we see our writers attacking the US for hostility, conspiracy and cultural aggression,” he said.

The contrast between US and local media — in terms of influence and visibility — was highlighted by Nawaf Obaid, an information and petroleum analyst. “The US media is an effective player. But the Saudi media, especially the print media, has no international role at all.”

A frequent objection is that the special features of Saudi society created special circumstances for the media to operate in, but Shobokshi was dismissive.

“These special features are a type of self-deception. When we insist that we have our peculiarities, we are allowing ourselves to do anything.”

Al-Radadi picked up on the subject of cultural idiosyncrasies and linked it to media representation in the West.

“What is the relationship between wearing hijab and the Sept. 11 attacks?” he asked. “Is it credible that none of (the American journalists visiting the Kingdom) found anything good to write about?”

Most of these journalists came to the Kingdom with preconceived notions, he said.

Shobokshi argued that, on the contrary, if foreign journalists had found access to the Kingdom easier in the past, many problems could have been avoided.

“If foreign journalists had been allowed to visit before Sept. 11, there would have been some form of cultural outreach. It would have countered sensationalism and improved their knowledge of the Kingdom,” he said.

Fowzia said the cultural differences could actually be a basis for understanding.

“They have families and a heritage like us,” she said. “There should be a platform for cultural contacts with the West.”

The participants highlighted that misunderstandings also worked the other way round.

Anecdotes included the story of a Saudi journalist who misunderstood Gen. Schwarzkopf’s uttering “Hail Mary” on several occasions as an indication that the Gulf War had been a Christian attack on Islam.

“It’s an expression often used during soccer matches,” Shobokshi explained.

“The Americans consider what they saw as Saudi media indifference (to the Sept. 11 events) as an outright rejection,” said Al-Aswad.

According to Shubailey, America itself was late in evaluating the events.

“The Saudi government was quicker in the evaluation as it set up a legal and political committee to investigate the attacks in the US soon after the incident. But the intervention of some agencies as well as unfolding events did not give the committee a chance to continue,” he said.

Al-Aswad added: “Did our journalists travel to the US to explain to us and decision-makers or political analysts what Bush believes in? Or what the agenda of the new rightist Christian lobby was? If we have a media which understands American culture, will it interpret the word crusade properly for us?”

“Do we have capable journalists to send to the US?” Shobokshi asked. “The answer is no.”

The Saudi press does not have permanent correspondents at the Congress and the Pentagon as well as at the White House and at the State Department.

“The Saudi press lacks experts in American affairs to explain to their readers the reality of what is going on in the US and how decisions are taken there,” Obaid says.

The Saudi press just publishes what the international news agencies and American newspapers write about the US, without making any additional or original efforts, he added.

The debate returned to professionalism in the way the Saudi media operates with Obaid’s complaint about the lack of a clear vision for dealing with changing realities.

“Some Saudi newspapers are run by personalities who have been in the same post for many years. Naturally, the paper is devoid of youthful blood required to appreciate the cultural factor and the changes of the modern world.”

Dr. Shubailey, however, praised the Saudi media for showing the courage for breaking out of its official framework for the first time. Whether these changes had come about as a result of political decisions, as Shobokshi argues, or whether they were the result of the foreign situation and internal pressure, as Shubailry believed, was a moot point.

This opening up notwithstanding, Obaid pointed out that “the concept of investigative journalism — which serves not only the readers but also analysts and decision-makers — is totally missing here.”

“In the Saudi press, we don’t see any craving to find out the truth,” Shobokshi later said.

(Part IV on Tuesday)