Times have changed at Arab News. There was a time when you thought twice before using the term “green revolution”. In fact, it was toned down to “green evolution” because revolution was a taboo, whether in the agrarian or linguistic sense. On another occasion, a cartoon depicting a cross in one of Ripley’s “Believe It or Not” was put on hold and cleared only after it had been blotted out. One over-enthusiastic editor changed the heading for the recipe “Chicken à la King” to “Chicken à la” for fear of offense.
And more recently, another journalist had the mortification to see his story spiked. Reason: The interviewee kept his “fingers crossed”. “No cross here, only crescent,” the writer was told. This was the time when you thought twice even to cross t’s and dot i’s and tried to play safe by keeping your “fingers parallel”.
As an Arab News journalist based in Riyadh with over a quarter century experience under my belt, I have been a witness to profound changes over the decades. The idiom has changed. The format has a new look. The newspaper contents are wide and varied. If I could visualize Arab News as a dame, she spent her childhood in hijab.
Today she looks quite glamorous and trendy marching in step with haute couture. She is 30 years young, alive and kicking. Yet, in spite of her modernity, she has retained her traditional Islamic values reflecting her good upbringing. She gets e-mails from all over the world from her fans seeking to understand the Middle East perspective of events in the region, not to mention an Arab take on wider international events. So much for the metaphor.
From reporting on schools, supermarkets, hospitals and hotels over the past decades to stories of national interest, crime and punishment, human interest stuff, IT and business-oriented news, Arab News coverage has turned full circle. It reflects the way the newspaper has responded to the challenges of the times by being proactive through a paradigm shift.
For this, the credit must go to its editor in chief for anticipating the shape of things to come. And also the staff for its high level of professionalism and a deep sense of commitment. When the going gets tough, the tough get going at Arab News.
The reason is that the newspaper functions in an environment that is not conducive to the flow of news. And when it does, all you get is a trickle. Like a craftsman, you have to lick it into shape, and flesh out the skeleton with facts and figures to enhance its news value. I remember covering one of the GCC summits when all we had at our disposal was the history of the GCC. It was nothing short of a hard grind to come up with a report that eventually made it to the front page.
Apart from the fact that covering an event in Arabic puts a non-Arab journalist at a severe disadvantage, another inhibiting factor is the tendency by so many officials and businessmen to skimp on giving out hard news. There is a tendency to generalize and to shift the news focus on the positive aspect of the event. Moreover, with some honorable exceptions, the spokesmen dealing with the media do not do their homework properly.
This leaves the journalist groping in the dark, especially if he represents an English daily. Those in charge of public relations in the ministries and public sector organizations do not take any notes at the press conference for the benefit of the English media. The person holding the press conference sums up his statement and the ensuing question-answer session in a few words in English before he leaves.
It is obvious to anyone covering the ministerial beats for a long time that there is a lack of training among officials in handling the media. Getting an appointment for an interview at the higher level seems like a Herculean task. After being driven from pillar to post, he considers himself lucky to nail down a middle level official as part of the daily grind. What the officials fail to realize is that the higher the source of news, the higher will be the news value.
I also remember chasing a story for over two months before I was granted an interview with a deputy minister. I persevered in getting the story not because it was terribly important but for the satisfaction of achieving a dubious record. In other cases, the stock response from a government official or the PR executive is to ask for a list of questions to be submitted. That’s a polite way of turning down your request. And when you try to follow up by contacting him on his mobile phone, the trail turns cold.
Yet, the Royal Commission of Jubail and Yanbu did contact me once during the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. As Kuwaitis and expatriates from South and Southeast Asia were fleeing to Saudi Arabia to escape from the occupation forces, the exodus pushed the panic button among the Filipinos in Riyadh.
It was then that a PR official from the Royal Commission contacted me to do an interview with Philippine Ambassador Abraham Rasul. The message was to reassure the OFWs that there was nothing to worry and they could stay put in their second home. The second time they made use of the English, Urdu and Malayalam newspapers was when they wanted to create a scare among the illegal expatriates that they must take advantage of the amnesty offer and leave the Kingdom before they face the crackdown. Arab News again rose to the occasion by carrying the message with the desired effect. It is thus far and no further for expatriate journalists.
It must be said to the credit of Arab News staffers that despite these heavy odds, they have done a remarkably good job in getting news either from their own contacts or their colleagues in sister publications. For reasons best known to them some ministries prefer to invite only Saudi journalists to their press conferences.
This is a serious mistake, since Arab News as a leading English daily from the Middle East gets over half a million hits on its website. It receives letters from all over the world, but mainly from the US, the UK, other European countries and, of course, the Indian Subcontinent.
We get more hits from abroad than from the Kingdom. When outsiders take Arab News seriously for the depth of its editorial content and the breadth of its news coverage, there is no reason why government officials should treat it as a lightweight. If decision-makers want to reach out to the Western audience, you have got to do it through Arab News.
The government should seriously consider appointing translators and interpreters at the various ministries. It will be a win-win situation. Qualified Saudi graduates with English and other foreign-language skills are available at the College of Languages and Translation (COLT), King Saud University. Employing qualified graduates from this college would not only create job opportunities for Saudis, it could also highlight the various activities of the ministries for the benefit of Internet browsers all over the world as well as diplomatic missions in the Kingdom.
For this to happen, the bureaucracy should come out of its shell and be more accessible to the media, both Arabic and English. When journalists are starved of legitimate news, they turn to other sources. If the information turns out to be inaccurate, the authorities are quick to remind us that the reporter should have checked his facts before rushing to the press. But the untold story is that the journalist’s knock on the door of the ministries remains unanswered most of the times. With the winds of change blowing across in the Middle East, the news management style should also reflect that change.
(Having joined the newspaper in 1980, Javid Hassan is the longest serving member of Arab News.)
