Television in Saudi Arabia
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Television in Saudi Arabia appears in John Kiriakou's account as a worked example of how a closed society manages information, described from his own time living in the kingdom.

The closed society

The premise he sets first is one he says most Americans do not understand: Saudi Arabia really is a very closed society. He qualifies the comparison rather than reaching for it, "it's not as closed as North Korea certainly", and gives the practical test instead: try to get into Saudi Arabia without a sponsor, and you cannot.

How broadcasting was permitted

The Saudis were the last government in the Middle East to allow broadcast television in their country. What finally carried the argument was not liberalisation but its opposite: Sheikh bin Baz became convinced that if they had television, at least they could broadcast the Quran twenty-four hours a day.

What was on

Kiriakou describes the result from his own residence there. There were two Arabic-language channels and one English-language channel. One channel was the Quran, twenty-four hours a day. The other carried religious discussion and religiously themed programming, "and then every once in a while they would put in an episode of Doogie Howser or the Waltons or something like that. It was very odd."

What he says it accomplished

He treats the arrangement as propaganda that worked. This was a way for the Saudi government to propagandise its own people, and over many years it convinced its own people, or at least many of them, that the Wahhabi brand of Sunni Islam is the correct path and the only true Islam. Talk to Saudis today, he says, and many of them really believe that.

See also

- Saudi Arabia and radicalism
- The U.S.,Saudi relationship
- The Saudi fear of an election
