WikiLeaks’ #Saudi Cables reveal the Kingdom’s foreign media manipulation strategies

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Now it is all beginning to come out. For years now, the enemedia has smeared, vilified, and defamed my colleagues and me for the crime of telling the truth about the jihad threat. They’re marched in lockstep, with no one, absolutely no one, breaking ranks. No we are seeing why: they’re bought and paid for.

Obama-Bows

“The Saudi Cables,” WikiLeaks, August 23, 2016 (thanks to Christian):

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Cables and other documents from the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia Ministry of Foreign Affairs

A total of 122619 published so far

 

Buying Silence: How the Saudi Foreign Ministry controls Arab media

On Monday, Saudi Arabia celebrated the beheading of its 100th prisoner this year. The story was nowhere to be seen on Arab media despite the story’s circulation on wire services. Even international media was relatively mute about this milestone compared to what it might have been if it had concerned a different country. How does a story like this go unnoticed?

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Today’s release of the WikiLeaks “Saudi Cables” from the Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs show how it’s done.

The oil-rich Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and its ruling family take a systematic approach to maintaining the country’s positive image on the international stage. Most world governments engage in PR campaigns to fend off criticism and build relations in influential places. Saudi Arabia controls its image by monitoring media and buying loyalties from Australia to Canada and everywhere in between.

Documents reveal the extensive efforts to monitor and co-opt Arab media, making sure to correct any deviations in regional coverage of Saudi Arabia and Saudi-related matters. Saudi Arabia’s strategy for co-opting Arab media takes two forms, corresponding to the “carrot and stick” approach, referred to in the documents as “neutralisation” and “containment”. The approach is customised depending on the market and the media in question.

“Contain” and “Neutralise”

The initial reaction to any negative coverage in the regional media is to “neutralise” it. The term is used frequently in the cables and it pertains to individual journalists and media institutions whose silence and co-operation has been bought. “Neutralised” journalists and media institutions are not expected to praise and defend the Kingdom, only to refrain from publishing news that reflects negatively on the Kingdom, or any criticism of its policies. The “containment” approach is used when a more active propaganda effort is required. Journalists and media institutions relied upon for “containment” are expected not only to sing the Kingdom’s praises, but to lead attacks on any party that dares to air criticisms of the powerful Gulf state.

One of the ways “neutralisation” and “containment” are ensured is by purchasing hundreds or thousands of subscriptions in targeted publications. These publications are then expected to return the favour by becoming an “asset” in the Kingdom’s propaganda strategy. A document listing the subscriptions that needed renewal by 1 January 2010 details a series of contributory sums meant for two dozen publications in Damascus, Abu Dhabi, Beirut, Kuwait, Amman and Nouakchott. The sums range from $500 to 9,750 Kuwaiti Dinars ($33,000). The Kingdom effectively buys reverse “shares” in the media outlets, where the cash “dividends” flow the opposite way, from the shareholder to the media outlet. In return Saudi Arabia gets political “dividends” – an obliging press.

An example of these co-optive practices in action can be seen in an exchange between the Saudi Foreign Ministry and its Embassy in Cairo. On 24 November 2011 Egypt’s Arabic-language broadcast station ONTV hosted the Saudi opposition figure Saad al-Faqih, which prompted the Foreign Ministry to task the embassy with inquiring into the channel. The Ministry asked the embassy to find out how “to co-opt it or else we must consider it standing in the line opposed to the Kingdom’s policies“.

The document reports that the billionaire owner of the station, Naguib Sawiris, did not want to be “opposed to the Kingdom’s policies” and that he scolded the channel director, asking him “never to host al-Faqih again”. He also asked the Ambassador if he’d like to be “a guest on the show”.

The Saudi Cables are rife with similar examples, some detailing the figures and the methods of payment. These range from small but vital sums of around $2000/year to developing country media outlets – a figure the Guinean News Agency “urgently needs” as “it would solve many problems that the agency is facing” – to millions of dollars, as in the case of Lebanese right-wing television station MTV.

Confrontation

The “neutralisation” and “containment” approaches are not the only techniques the Saudi Ministry is willing to employ. In cases where “containment” fails to produce the desired effect, the Kingdom moves on to confrontation. In one example, the Foreign Minister was following a Royal Decree dated 20 January 2010 to remove Iran’s new Arabic-language news network, Al-Alam, from the main Riyadh-based regional communications satellite operator, Arabsat. After the plan failed, Saud Al Faisal sought to “weaken its broadcast signal“.

The documents show concerns within the Saudi administration over the social upheavals of 2011, which became known in the international media as the “Arab Spring”. The cables note with concern that after the fall of Mubarak, coverage of the upheavals in Egyptian media was “being driven by public opinion instead of driving public opinion”. The Ministry resolved “to give financial support to influential media institutions in Tunisia“, the birthplace of the “Arab Spring”.

The cables reveal that the government employs a different approach for its own domestic media. There, a wave of the Royal hand is all that is required to adjust the output of state-controlled media. A complaint from former Lebanese Prime Minister and Saudi citizen Saad Hariri concerning articles critical of him in the Saudi-owned Al-Hayat and Asharq Al-Awsat newspapers prompted a directive to “stop these type of articles” from the Foreign Ministry.

This is a general overview of the Saudi Foreign Ministry’s strategy in dealing with the media. WikiLeaks’ Saudi Cables contain numerous other examples that form an indictment of both the Kingdom and the state of the media globally.

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Mal M
Mal M
7 years ago

Tell me who your friends are, and I will tell you who you are.

berserker
berserker
7 years ago

If these dune dwellers had not found Black Gold under the Earth, they would still be living in tents and riding camels. And the Kuffar had to help them dig up the oil. Pathetic people.

Mark Steiner
Mark Steiner
7 years ago
Reply to  berserker

Even if oil hadn’t been found under the sand dunes, America has enough of its own oil to keep the country going without importing a drop from Arabia. BUt the internationalists kept America from exploring,retaining and using its own oil. But – you know the rest of the story.

IzlamIsTyranny
IzlamIsTyranny
7 years ago
Reply to  Mark Steiner

The top oil exporter to the USA used to be Mexico, I’m not sure if that’s true anymore. What the hell Mexico has done w/the literally billions of US dollars pumped into their economy is a mystery.

Mark Steiner
Mark Steiner
7 years ago
Reply to  IzlamIsTyranny

You make a good point. More recently Canada was also a major supplier. Still the USA guzzles 20 million (or more) BOPD from whatever source, and the Saudis have had good friends in high places to ensure they are well cared for in America.

We could tell every other oil producing nation to take a hike if we had pro-American leadership made of the sterner stuff to ensure usage of our almost limitless oil and natural gas reserves – responsibly, and environmentally safe.

Canadian Patriot
Canadian Patriot
7 years ago
Reply to  berserker

Just a slight correction, my friend. The Saudis are not and were not capable of finding sand in their own desert. The Saudi oil fields were found and developed by American oil companies.

Nathan Brazil
Nathan Brazil
7 years ago
Reply to  berserker

They didn’t find it. The US and British did. Without oil, their GDP is 3rd world almost non-existent….they don’t produce anything. Except for the terror, murder and misery they export of course.

Hannah Szenes
Hannah Szenes
7 years ago

Any evidence that this is going on with American media companies?

Mark Steiner
Mark Steiner
7 years ago

The Saudi kingdom would have no power over anyone if America and other nations had sought oil resources outside Muslim lands, We have been buying out destruction since at least 1973 when, after the Yom Kippur war, OPEC played the oil embargo card and strangled western nations with high-priced oil. But – the internationalists in America and elsewhere, who set up this scenario, didn’t worry as they profited handsomely while Islam gained the wealth necessary to wage jihad worldwide. You can thank American leadership for putting this nation in peril.
For years beginning in 1974 (Alaska North Slope oil discovery at Gull Island and other exploration) the US was oil dependent, but the internationalists in Washington sealed the documents of the discoveries that by themselves made America energy-independent.
Check Lindsey Williams “Energy Non-Crisis” for these and other details the American sheep either mocked or avoided when the truth became known..

The internationalists are traitors and guilty of high treason against the United States.

Ann Inquirer ✓ᴺᵃᵗᶦᵒᶰᵃˡᶦˢᵗ
Ann Inquirer ✓ᴺᵃᵗᶦᵒᶰᵃˡᶦˢᵗ
7 years ago

Saudis know how to most effectively spend their oil money, buy media all over the world and control the message: Sharia is the best way of life… for men and only the subservient.

Mahou Shoujo
Mahou Shoujo
7 years ago

Only the chronically stupid would like shari’a.

Craig
Craig
7 years ago
Reply to  Mahou Shoujo

Or the weak little worm that wants to have power over women.

Mahou Shoujo
Mahou Shoujo
7 years ago
Reply to  Craig

One of the problems is women who accept the boolshitt of male superiority.

IzlamIsTyranny
IzlamIsTyranny
7 years ago

While muslum men are at the top of the islamic Bandini mountain, it’s still a mountain of excrement.

Justin
Justin
7 years ago

I mean ultimately why wouldn’t we invade Saudi Arabia and seize their oil fields? We could do this but don’t; and allow them to do what they are doing. There has to be some agreement between the elite that allows them to maintain their power?

Phalanx11B
Phalanx11B
7 years ago
Reply to  Justin

Agree. However, Mecca, Islam’s holiest site, is in Saudi Arabia. We would be soon after fighting the entire Muslim world if we seized it. That you can be sure of.

Mahou Shoujo
Mahou Shoujo
7 years ago

The lame stream media, like everything else is for sale, islam finds itself in the money with much of the rest of the world heavily in debit due to brain dead socialism, liberalism, and democrat economic insanity. A petro dollar goes a long ways today.

Wulf2000
Wulf2000
7 years ago

A few years ago I read there is a Saudi prince which owns 10% of News Corp. which is Fox News. How many shares does the Saudis own in America’s news media?

Craig
Craig
7 years ago

We always see our cowardly Marxist turd of a president bowing to the scum of the world. Rat obama is devoid of testosterone, so his kids must be rent-a-kids.

Craig
Craig
7 years ago

Saudis…the same ones that flew the planes into the WTC.

Soundclick.com/Globalfirm
Soundclick.com/Globalfirm
7 years ago

I wonder how much the paid for Wikipedia to be how it is. Or is it owned or voluntary..

IzlamIsTyranny
IzlamIsTyranny
7 years ago

Wikipedia is a muslum propaganda outlet at this point.

Drew the Infidel
Drew the Infidel
7 years ago

Keep in mind that fifteen of the nineteen 9/11 hijackers plus bin Laden himself were all Saudi.

Stephen Honig
Stephen Honig
7 years ago

I hope heads off doesn’t involve Jews.

joe1429
joe1429
7 years ago

The 2 faced saudis are just as bad as the paks

joe1429
joe1429
7 years ago

Saudis funding all these “super mosques” in all western countries

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Thanks for sharing!