Picture the scene. A major terrorist inspired atrocity has just occurred. It is the middle of the night. You receive a call from a television network requesting you to participate in a live phone-in. You explain that you are in a different city and don’t have access to any exclusive information about the current crisis.
The sweet voice lilting over the trans-Atlantic connection is unfazed by your revelation.
“OK. So where are you exactly?” it inquires.
“In Riyadh. About four hours away from the city in question,” you reply.
“Not a problem,” it reassures. “So can you just find out what you can and we’ll be going live in two hours time?”
“Well, I’ll try my best,” you volunteer, “but I really don’t know very much more than what you have just told me.”
“I don’t have a problem with that,” sweetness concedes. “I think we can run with that. It’ll work. Call you back in a couple of hours.”
This is exactly what happened to me a year ago during the tragic siege that took place in a compound in Alkhobar. During the lead up to the phone-in I heard the announcement, “And now we have Lubna Hussain, our correspondent in Saudi Arabia, live on the ground in Alkhobar. Lubna tell us the latest.”
“The latest” was that I was not affiliated to this network in any shape or form, never had been and never will be their “correspondent”, was nowhere near the compound in question but holed up in a bedroom in Riyadh, and had never been to Alkhobar in my life.
Indeed, there was stunned silence when I apprised the anchor on air of this revision of facts and furthermore almost committed professional suicide in front of six million viewers in the bargain.
Perhaps there was a genuine mistake that had been made. In the frenzy of producing live news, things can very often go awry. And yet, I don’t think that I would be incorrect in assuming that you, like me, watch the news and have faith in every word as if it were the gospel truth. It’s hard to imagine that even the news can get it wrong. What’s worse is that more often than not, the initial impact of that first announcement, even if its authenticity is questionable, is more effective and hard hitting than any corrections that may be made subsequently. It’s a question of first impressions. You have already been presented with a scenario and ipso facto you believe this almost obediently. If such an opinion is to be dislodged it will take more than a minor effort to achieve this.
Unfortunately, in a world where there exists a sordid intimacy between the media and realpolitik it is becoming increasingly arduous to discern what the truth at the heart of the matter is. Sure, all the news channels relay “facts” but it is the manner in which they are presented that has become increasingly important. In some, there is no longer much scope for us to judiciously assess through a process of impartial reporting what is going on in the world around us as it has become the job of the producers of the piece to make up our minds for us.
As Saudis, we have slowly come to terms with the actuality that many people from all over the world view us as terrorists. But where was such an impression borne in the first place? Images of Osama Bin Laden as the Saudi mastermind behind Al-Qaeda flooded TV screens globally. Pictures of bombings, destruction and havoc caused by his network of militants grabbed the attention of all of us. The same channels beamed that horrific footage of the twin towers ablaze after having been struck by aircraft hijacked mainly by Saudis into practically every home in the civilized world.
The common link? Saudi Arabia. The damage had been done. But in all honesty, were such pictures evidence enough to damn an entire nation? The facts were indisputable. But does this mean that out of a population of several million, a handful of deviants were powerful enough to negate the achievements of everyone else combined? It didn’t matter that we were as appalled as the rest of the world. That we too were targeted and abhorred what had happened. That we were as determined as anyone else, more so in fact, to rid the world of this kind of evil. We had been typecast and that was that.
ETA is not synonymous with the Spanish. The IRA is not symbolic of ordinary Irish people. The Red Brigade is not representative of fashionable Italians. Who on earth would dare equate the KKK with Americans? But the actions of Al-Qaeda speak for the entire population of Saudi Arabia.
Now, it seems that there are TV channels that have assumed the mantle of reinforcing the stereotype. Their reporters and journalists who come into Saudi Arabia tend to come in with an “angle”. They may even go to great pains to feign objectivity. But no matter what they see, hear or experience firsthand they refuse to take this on board if it contradicts their preconceived notions. Such reality is simply not deemed significant enough to detract them from their sensationalism-inspired agenda that will almost certainly boost ratings.
Herein lies the problem. This constant bombardment of television news that we are subjected to round-the-clock has slowly but surely eroded our ability to distinguish between fact and opinion. There simply is no time to reflect and cogitate between one bulletin and the next. We are glued to an endless cycle of violence and rhetoric. We see the same reports repeatedly over and over again. We lose our ability to reason and as I have said before “a lie repeated often enough becomes the truth.”
There are others, however, who remain true to their profession and approach assignments with integrity and an open mind. Katie Couric and Tom Brokaw of NBC both reported what they saw when they came to the Kingdom and produced balanced programs that were far more cognizant of Saudi society than most others.
But are such noble and earnest endeavors sufficient to counteract all the negativity spawned from media misrepresentation? Sadly, I don’t think they are. There is some hope for us though in the ranks of ordinary people who are not as gullible as we may be led to believe. I am often amazed at several of the letters I receive from individuals who haven’t lost touch with reality in spite of it all. I wonder how it is that they can watch my countrymen portrayed as militant fanatics hour after hour, day after day and yet still have the presence of mind to know that we should not all be tarred with the same brush.
I wonder if I were subjected to such a propaganda campaign that characterized the citizens of one nation as being violent misogynists who had no aspiration in life other than to blow themselves up in the name of a religion I didn’t understand, whether I would be independent enough to challenge this conviction. And yet mercifully there are people out there who are actively thinking, not merely rearranging their prejudices.
(Lubna Hussain is a Saudi writer. She is based in Riyadh.)
