Propaganda against KSA

Linda S. Heard

Disclaimer: Views expressed by writers in this section are their own and do not necessarily reflect Arab News' point-of-view

There was a time when the prime role of television news was to report hard facts leaving viewers to form their own opinions. Today, every reporter, anchor, professor, activist and member of an obscure think tank are political, geopolitical and strategic pundits. Moreover, almost every network has its own agenda when it comes to certain issues. News is cherry-picked or exaggerated or glossed over to suit its core editorial policies.Guests are selected whose opinions coincide with those policies. Dished out to us nowadays is not strictly news; more often than not it’s news polluted with views. Unaware viewers are being indoctrinated on what to feel and what to think unless they have the time and inclination to delve beneath the sound bites and the strap lines.While there is a diversity of opinion when it comes to domestic news, the western media almost behaves like a monolithic gang with its reportage on the Middle East driven in part by government lines. This has become extremely noticeable over the past five years. Egypt is a case in point.As someone who is based there, who has lived through two revolutions and followed the progress and setbacks since, I was shocked and dismayed to see how just about every English-language satellite channel vilified the June 30th mass uprising against the failed Mursi regime and has placed a target on the back of the current government ever since. Almost every guest invited to talk about Egypt on the BBC is either an anti-government activist or someone associated with the banned Muslim Brotherhood. When I spoke to friends and family in the UK, it was clear that they had soaked up the propaganda like millions of others in my home country and nothing I said could change their minds.On Saturday, the transition to democracy was complete. The democratically-elected president who is beloved by the majority of Egyptians handed legislative powers to the elected Parliament in keeping with the constitution. His speech received cheers, applause and shouts of “We are with you, Rais” throughout and at the end he was given a standing ovation. He was also applauded by people who watched the coverage in cafes. But you wouldn’t have known that had you been watching CNN or BBC or Al Jazeera, which chose the moment to savage the occasion.Moreover, while the media never fails to bash Egypt on human rights, the fact that the country is battling terrorism and struggling to put the country back on a secure footing is rarely taken into account. Iran that makes Egypt’s human rights record pale by comparison is currently being treated as the hero of the day, never mind that people are regularly hanged from cranes and minorities, such as the Ahwazi Arabs, are forbidden from giving their newborns Arab names or being taught Arabic in schools. Worse, although they are the rightful sons of the soil in the oil-rich region of Arabistan (now called Khuzistan) occupied by Persia, they are relegated to low-paid menial jobs and villages without electricity.There’s never a mention that the Lebanese are under the Iranian boot via Iran’s proxy Hezbollah. There’s scant criticism over the Iranian intervention in Syria in partnership with the regime or the money and weapons funneled by Iran to the Shiite Houthis in Yemen who not only planned to take over governance but also to aggress Saudi Arabia. What’s really astonishing is the way the networks make excuses for the continued “Death to America” chants as meaningless rhetoric designed for domestic consumption.Even as Iran is being welcomed into the international fold with over $100 billion in its grasp, the western media celebrates Tehran’s mega shopping spree in Europe. As far as I can tell, Khamenei’s announcement that he intends to bolster “the resistance” (read Hezbollah, its terrorist cells and rabble rousers positioned in Arab lands) has disappeared under the radar.Now the media has discovered a new target, Saudi Arabia, which has emerged as a proactive regional player. Saudi bashing is the new sport. Saudi officials interviewed on any topic under the sun are invariably questioned about human rights, women’s rights and its laws, whereas Iranians are not only left off the hook, they are being courted.Saudi Foreign Minister Adel Al-Jubeir was recently tackled by reporters on Saudi women being unable to drive during his visit to Munich to attend a security conference, even though that subject had nothing to do with global security. His answers were impressive. “This is not a religious issue, it’s a societal issue,” he argued, while pointing out the advances in women’s empowerment that have taken place.“We went from no schools for women in 1960 to universal education to where today 55 percent of college students are women,” he said and was right to highlight that it took 100 years for the US to give females the right to vote and another 100 before there was a woman speaker in Congress. The Kingdom, the Islamic world’s heartland, should not have to make apologies to western reporters for its religious culture. That’s the business of the Saudi people and no one else’s. Yes, they have a wish list, but at the same time they understand that change in attitudes take time.The media should quit seeing Arab nations through their own narrow prism, should display greater cultural sensitivity and inject balance into its reports if it wants to retain the little credibility it still has. In my youth we were told, “Don’t believe everything you read!” My advice is: Don’t believe anything you hear or see until you’ve channel surfed, read the newspaper fine print and armed with solid facts, then and only then, you decide.