International media: So wrong, so often

Last December The Associated Press committed a blunder that could have resulted in the expulsion of its correspondent from Saudi Arabia, severing a vital information link between the Kingdom and the rest of the world.
The mistake occurred during The AP’s coverage of the International Institute of Strategic Studies (IISS) conference in Manama, Bahrain, where attendees discussed security issues in the Syrian region among other topics.
The AP reporter wrote that Saudi Arabia’s Deputy Foreign Minister Prince Abdulaziz bin Abdullah said that Gulf Arab states must quash any Arab Spring-inspired unrest or risk threats to their leadership across the oil-rich region.
According to the AP, “The comments echoed calls by Gulf authorities to widen crackdowns on perceived opposition such as rights activists and Islamist factions.
“His remarks also appeared aimed at justifying the intervention last year in Bahrain by a Saudi-led Gulf military force.
“Prince Abdulaziz said Gulf states cannot tolerate instability that could lead to challenges to the Western-allied leaders from Kuwait to Oman that have so far ridden out the Arab Spring.”
The quote made it clear that Saudi Arabia supported a crackdown on Arab Spring activists.
The only problem was the report was dead wrong.
According to a source from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, MOFA, the ministry demanded The AP to publish a correction or else they would close its office in the Kingdom and ban all their reporters to operate and work there.
The wire service later published the correction along with an apology to the ministry and published that Prince Abdulaziz bin Abdullah said, “Tampering with the stability and security of any Gulf Arab state is considered as tampering with the security and stability of all other Gulf Arab states” and his remarks did not mention any specific type of instability or threat.
As with any news report that is rushed for dissemination on the wires, mistakes can happen. Corrections are issued, but often the damage is done. Even seemingly less important topics can gain traction in the Western media, giving Saudi Arabia a black eye.
Last month, Western media outlets reported that an Emirati man was expelled from a Riyadh festival for being “too handsome” and threatening to distract Saudi women. The story was a fabrication, but it remained in the news for weeks. It solidified the perception that Saudi Arabia is an unforgiving and backward country.
Saudi Arabia is not blameless. The Kingdom is notoriously difficult for journalists to cover, whether they are Western reporters, South Asians covering Saudi Arabia from Dubai, or even Saudis writing for a Saudi newspaper. Government spokesmen are often not available for comment and Saudi papers write erroneous reports based on little or no information. Reporters are often forced to fill in the blanks on any given topic just to publish a story. “When you think of it, many (reporters) make those mistakes because sometimes it is not easy for them to get the information they need when it comes to Saudi news because nothing is clear to them,” said Saud Kateb, Saudi media technology professor at King Abdulaziz University. “There is no transparency on many subjects, especially when it comes to statistics and reaching authorities that can comment on subjects that has to deal with private matters.”
Kateb says this does not justify for international media to publish wrong information. “Part of the problem is related to us and our spokesperson from governmental sectors are hard to reach for both local and international media as well,” he said. “Most of those international media have a tight deadline so they use social media and blogs as a source and we all know that they are not reliable as professionals.”
Technology and the emerging role of social media have also conspired to produce false stories. More and more news outlets rely on social media to fill the blanks of a story. Coupled with the prevailing stereotypes of Saudis as less than tolerant and the urgency to get the news out to the public has resulted in stories that once posted on the Internet can never be taken back.
The handsome Emirati story is a case in point. Prior to the advent of Twitter and Facebook, reporters might have taken hours, if not days, to verify the story. Once a bit of information hit Twitter, the snowball effect took over and by the end of the first day the story broke, hundreds of Twitter followers retweeted the story. It took the Emirati “victim” himself to finally debunk the story.
Ali Alalyani, Saudi editor in chief and host of Yahala Show on Rotana Khalijia Channel, said the international media focus on stereotyping Saudis and they never change their views about Saudi Arabia no matter how much it develops or changes.
“What’s sad is when most international media deal with a Saudi-related story they don’t deal with in in a professional way, most of them transform into human activists which mixes between what they think and believe in and what the reality is,” he said. “International media should not take information and issues from anyone else aside from authorities, professionals or specialists to ensure credibility and not to spread the wrong word among other cultures about Saudi Arabia.”
Efforts by Arab News to reach Alicia Shepard, a US media critic at the Hank Greenspun School of Journalism and Media Studies at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, for comment were unsuccessful.
However, a Western journalist who covers Saudi Arabia for a major news organization and spoke on the condition that his name be not published because of the sensitivity of the issue, said often a news event reported in social media is difficult to verify.
“Sometimes the only news we can get is from Twitter or one of the social media outlets popular among Saudis,” the journalist said. “Getting official comment from any ministry is often next to impossible. The Ministry of Interior is usually good about getting us information, but then there are the rest that are very difficult to work with.”
The journalist said that laziness by the reporter is often the case when stories are wrong. “Legitimate news organizations never fabricate anything because their reputations are on the line, but I have seen plenty of reporters cut corners to get the story. And it may not be complete.”
Alalyani agrees with Kateb that the difficulty to reach the source is one of the reasons why international media publish false news about the Kingdom.
“I always say the reasons for rumors is censored facts,” he said. “I believe that if they had a reliable source, they wouldn’t have gone around the bush to find information that might be false about our society,” he said. “We have to respect the mentality of foreign media and our media because some spokespersons would not give a very clear information or detail by propose to push us away from the bad news.”