How does the Saudi media machine work, exactly?
Better than you might realize. Saudi Arabia’s own PR model, unlike other Arab countries, relies heavily on other GCC countries reprocessing their tomes of fake news and state-funded propaganda, coupled with an impressive number of heavyweight Saudi-financed think tanks in DC regurgitating the same stodge and an impressive phalanx of online bots contributing to the mix.
Don’t laugh. It’s a set up which serves them very well, and filling newspaper columns and the airwaves with ‘news’ manufactured in Riyadh – assisted by third-party, supportive outlets in the region who are happy to publish it without caring about its authenticity – is a policy which works pretty well.
And international media are only too happy to replicate it, given the almost entirely ‘news free zone’ that Saudi Arabia is, with no real media operating there in the first place – which, in turn, affects the ability for foreign journalists to operate there as well.
Case in point: women’s driving licences. You would have thought this was a story which would be a news item both regionally and internationally for not more than one day. In reality this is a story which is going to run. And run. And run.
Every conceivable facet of this story is going to be stretched beyond its conceivable limits as it supports a media program which Riyadh has concocted which aims to promote the kingdom as modernizing, when in reality it is not doing anything of the sort politically.
Cinemas, pop concerts, and women driving. Yep, we got it.
But can we move on? Well, no, because that’s all there is. A velvet revolution in the making is being churned out via the Saudi media machine designed to cover up an even fiercer internal crackdown, which has detained hundreds, embezzled billions from individuals’ bank accounts and is making Saudi Arabia look to the rest of the world like the most oppressive, paranoid regime going.
The canal is not an antidote to Riyadh’s paranoia but merely an extension of it. It will make Qatar an island (as Qatar is actually a peninsula) and will also reportedly create a military zone for the Saudis along with a nuclear dump. Subtle.
But wait. Here’s more on women diving!
But the Saudi media machine will go into overdrive on it, so expect, like the women’s driving licences, days, weeks and even months of the same subject being stretched out and played out in mind-numbing detail, over and over again. Think every single stage of the construction of the canal itself as being an article in a Saudi English language journal replicated in pages of verbose articles in English-language titles in the region, in particular the UAE. Even the Pakistani crane operator will have his 15 minutes of Andy Warhol fame with a story written about his work. Think an entire National Geographic documentary on the digging alone. Perhaps there will even be free video handout and other press kits on the tools themselves which do the digging.
And then, when it is built, there will be the development of the banks and the whole process will start again. This is really the plan. The Saudis believe that they can capitalize on the Qatari position to go it alone by flooding regional media with the banality of a construction project, confident that international media will dutifully copy and paste it.
Qatar’s economy goes from strength to strength. Meanwhile, a number of credible reports in recent weeks have speculated that since an incident with a drone in April, the Saudi Crown Prince is avoiding cameras so as to not let his enemies know his exact whereabouts. If that is true, it could be argued that his 2030 vision to reform the country and its economy will also be troubling him, given the dismal lack of confidence the foreign investor community has in the kingdom.
Foreign investors can barely scrape together a billion dollars for the new kingdom. The adage, it seems, of ‘when in hole, stop digging’ has failed to reach Riyadh. But can you blame them when Western media hits new all-time lows in its reporting on the region?
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