{"id":7554,"date":"2011-06-05T22:38:22","date_gmt":"2011-06-05T18:38:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/?p=7554"},"modified":"2011-07-16T11:33:59","modified_gmt":"2011-07-16T07:33:59","slug":"saudi-media-law-lets-just-get-rid-of-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/region\/gcc\/saudi-arabia\/saudi-media-law-lets-just-get-rid-of-it\/","title":{"rendered":"Saudi Media Law: Let’s Just Get Rid of It"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Back in April, I wrote about a new press law<\/strong><\/a> that seemed intended to stifle the media. Clearly, I wasn\u2019t the only one who saw this law as fraught with danger. Saudi Gazette<\/em> reports that the Minister of Culture & Information, Abdul Aziz Khoja, has been making the rounds of editorial offices and getting an earful for his pains.<\/p>\n

The Ministry will be \u2018clarifying\u2019 the law with a series of by-laws later this year, he says. That\u2019s useful. But the law itself is seriously flawed at a most basic level. As the article quotes him, the Minister says that the law forbids \u201cinjurious\u2019 attacks on anyone.\u201d Who is to decide what\u2019s \u2018injurious\u2019 or not? Well, \u2018specialized committees\u2019 are supposed to do that, he says. Who will be on the committees? What\u2019s their agenda? How will they be appointed? Will the committees include journalists? If so, which journalists?<\/p>\n

Will the committees be able to say, \u2018No,\u2019 to high level figures with political or religious clout? The Minister says that the law, if read correctly, levels the playing field, \u2018\u2026making no difference between the ordinary citizen and officials\u2026\u2019 That would be nice, but frankly, I don\u2019t believe it. Officials and the well-connected often get the benefit of the doubt, deserved or not, that ordinary citizens do not. Nor is this an exclusively Saudi or Arab media problem. In the US, former Senator and Presidential Candidate John Edwards\u2014now charged with several crimes<\/strong><\/a>\u2014certainly got special media treatment, if only (but not) through the media\u2019s choice of what not to report on. The new law has no obvious bar to this abuse of media.<\/p>\n

To be fair, I should give the Minister and his new law a chance to be amended. Perhaps there will be amendments that pull its teeth. Khoja says that these by-laws will be coming after Ramadan. I\u2019m willing to wait and see, but I don\u2019t think they\u2019ll fix the problem. Rescinding this law would fix the problem.<\/p>\n

Khoja allays fears over press law amendments<\/strong><\/a>
\nSaeed Al-suraihi<\/p>\n

JEDDAH: Abdul Aziz Khoja, Minister of Culture and Information, has said he is to hold a \u201cwide-ranging\u201d meeting after Ramadan with figures from the country\u2019s various cultural fields to review topics of concern.<\/p>\n

Speaking in an interview with Okaz\/Saudi Gazette, Khoja gave his views on a range of issues, notably the recent amendments to the Press and Publications Law, which have resulted in a degree of anxiety among journalists and writers given that the changes and additions were announced within a wider context of a discourse calling for greater freedom and transparency.<\/p>\n

The minister said he was \u201csurprised at some persons\u2019 interpretations and fear of the amendments\u201d.<\/p>\n

\u201cA discerning read of the amendments shows that they in fact give greater room for freedom and transparency and constructive criticism,\u201d Khoja said. \u201cThey don\u2019t give anyone immunity, and if there are some restraints and reservations that is only to be expected as it is normal the world over.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said the amendments forbid \u201cinjurious or misrepresentative attacks on anyone\u201d.
\n\u2026<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In this article, the Minister also displays some uncomfortable power issues. He accepts that those seeking a print newspaper license to publish have a harder time than those seeking on-line publication permits. This, he says, is in order to protect print newspapers.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m sorry, but it is not the government\u2019s job to decide which media flourish and which fail. That is up to the consumers of information. The Saudi government already has the Saudi Press Agency to carry its own news with its own spin. It should not have the power to manipulate licensure of a supposedly free press. If print media fail, then they no longer meet the demands of consumers. If they get swept aside in a current of new media, that may be very unfortunate on several fronts. It is not something the government should concern itself with.<\/p>\n

Again, this is not just a Saudi issue\u2026 there are print media in the US now looking for a \u2018government bailout\u2019 to keep them afloat. It is simply bad policy to do it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

CROSSROADS ARABIA: Saudi authorities have paid attention to the furore that greeted the new legislation dealing with the media. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":42,"featured_media":7556,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[154,44,89,10],"tags":[461,366,7302,18280,5226,3256,707,18275,3882,385,2890,18302],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7554"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/42"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7554"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7554\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7556"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7554"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7554"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mideastposts.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7554"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}