Earlier this month, in a shooting rampage, a 25-year-old Canadian gunman opened fire on the student body in a college in Montreal, killing one student and injuring over nineteen others. The shooter, Kimveer Gill, was killed during the ensuing police battle at the site.

Some days later, a 15-year-old Canadian boy was arrested for posting similar threats on the same website used by Gill. He was allegedly threatening to go on a shooting spree in a high school in Hudson, Que., west of Montreal. But surprise of all surprises, none of the media or wire services were quick to tag labels on these two offenders. There was no cry of “Christian” extremist or “Christian” terrorist in any of the headlines. And there shouldn’t have been any.

But had a student of our faith been involved, then I have no doubt about the immediacy of our religion of Islam coming under attack with headlines blaring “Muslim terrorist” or “Islamic” extremist goes on killing frenzy, killing the innocent. And the coverage would have been extensive.

When it comes to crime, the act of one or two lone Christians or Jews does not reflect on their populace.

But it is certainly a different set of Western media standards reserved exclusively for Muslims. The Islamic world’s reactions to the pope’s recent remarks only garnered headlines when they focused on mobs of ruffians burning down effigies. Which brings me to the point of this column.

Around that time, ministers of information from several Islamic countries were gathered here in Jeddah for a conference to deal with the rising negativity in the world press against Islam and its peoples.

Many issues and ideas were brought up, and final resolutions were agreed to in their parting. But was what they came up with enough? Did it really address the issues compounding day by day, in a battle we seem to be losing before we have even started. Very little mention was made of the fact that while we have reporters and writers, almost all of them are confined by limitations of penning the languages of the world.

Our very own minister of information bemoaned the lack of qualified reporters and was quick to quiz a reporter on his coverage of the event by asking whether he had the temerity and the credentials to cover events in Mindanao or elsewhere. But then I ask; What has his ministry done to prepare qualified candidates who would do exactly that?

The media profession in this country is in my opinion still searching for the light. Whilst it has graduated from the mundane reporting of which personality arrived when and where and was greeted by whom and when, or by the bland fare of date production in some remote village in some remote province of this country, it still lacks in professionals versed in languages beyond Arabic.

And herein lies our failure. We can holler much as we want about blatant double standard by Western media. But yet we lack a consistency in preparing a generation of able graduates in the field of political science and international relations, students who may one day pursue a profession in the media and in languages that carry understanding beyond our borders. A generation that is capable of correcting biases, not through spin, but through fact and evidence and in a language understood by those shouldering such biases.

Nor is our Ministry of Higher Education validating such a profession, as I see no scholarships available on their website for those interested in the fields of media and journalism.

A relative recently told me of his failure to secure a scholarship for his daughter in the media field, as a bureaucrat in this ministry in Riyadh bluntly told him that such fields of study were considered unimportant. This ministry may fawn over the numbers it is preparing for higher studies, but are we all to become only doctors, engineers or computer programmers?

And so I say to our minister of information. We are losing the media war, not because we do not hold controlling interests in Western media outlets, and nor because we have no collective approach by Islamic countries to combat growing media distortion by the world’s press. It is our own failure to recognize our shortcomings and our inactivity to tackle this problem.

There are among the young Saudis today those who desire to venture into this profession. But without suitable support from the government or our own media moguls, their desire remains an elusive dream. And in a profession whose virtues demand that you be active, we are just the opposite...reactive!

Why not work on promoting our messages through the written word by our very qualified own, rather than the retainers of Western public relations outfits or the demonstrations of a frenzied mob of thugs? Would that not lead to better understanding among people of all nations?