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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Saudi Arabia
Index
In 1992 a total of ten daily newspapers, all privately owned,
were published in Saudi Arabia. Seven were printed in Arabic and
three in English. The most widely read Arabic dailies were Ar
Riyadh (circulation estimated at 140,000), published in
Riyadh, and Al Jazirah (circulation 90,000), published in
Jiddah. Smaller-circulation papers were published in both cities.
The cities of Ad Dammam, Mecca, and Medina also had daily
newspapers. All three English-language dailies were published in
Jiddah. The largest of these was Arab News with an
estimated circulation of 110,000. The smaller Saudi
Gazette (circulation 17,400) and Saudi News
(circulation 5,000) were specialized publications that emphasized
economic news and press releases from the state-owned Saudi Press
Agency. In addition to the daily papers, there were fourteen
weekly magazines, of which eight were published in Arabic and six
in English, and twelve periodicals.
Although there was no prepublication censorship of Saudi
newspapers, editors understood that articles expressing
opposition to the government or its policies were unacceptable,
and they thus exercised self-censorship. The Ministry of
Information effectively supervised all periodicals through the
Press Law of 1964. This law required the formation of a fifteenmember committee to assume financial and editorial responsibility
for each privately owned newspaper. The members of these
committees had to be approved by the Ministry of Information. In
contrast to the local press, the foreign press was heavily
censored before being permitted into the kingdom. The objective
of the censors was not only to remove politically sensitive
materials but also to excise advertisements deemed offensive to
public morality.
Since 1990 several editors, reporters, and photojournalists
have been suspended, dismissed, fired outright, or detained by
Saudi security authorities for violating the unwritten press
censorship code. In February 1992, the respected editor in chief
of the English-language daily, Arab News, Khaled al
Maeena, was fired for reproducing an Associated Press wire
service report that featured an interview with the Egyptian
cleric Shaykh Umar Abd ar Rahman, then residing in exile in New
Jersey. In December 1992, the editor in chief of the Arabiclanguage daily An Nadwah also was fired summarily after
his paper featured an article about Islamic groups in the
kingdom.
As of 1991, the most recent year for which statistics were
available, there were an estimated 4.5 million television sets in
Saudi Arabia and an estimated 5 million radio receivers. One
hundred twelve television stations throughout the country
broadcast both Arabic and English programs. There were fortythree AM radio stations and twenty-three FM stations. The Saudi
Arabian Broadcasting Service transmitted programs overseas in
Arabic, Farsi, French, Indonesian, Somali, Swahili, and Urdu.
Data as of December 1992
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