The Saudis want a reputation fix, but buying journalists won’t do the trick

There are signs that the reign of Saudi Arabia’s King Salman may see a shift in public relations strategy from his Riyadh government, in particular by making it easier for foreign journalists to visit the kingdom and by engaging Western journalists willing to work with its embassies. An international research firm based in Dubai has been engaged by the Saudi government’s ministry for culture and information, I have learned, to gather thoughts from a selection of journalists with an interest in the Gulf. I was one of those selected and was offered £100 for an hour-long interview with a ministry official; I planned in advance to donate the money to the family of a foreign journalist who is being held without charge by Riyadh. I haven’t heard from the research firm since, and the interview with the official hasn’t taken place.

The scoping out by the Saudis matches a push from their London and Washington embassies to experiment with being more media friendly, rather than bullying or paying off journalists. Documents released by WikiLeaks earlier this year showed a pattern of intimidation running from 2010 to mid-2015. The documents show how the correspondent of the Financial Times was withdrawn and its Riyadh bureau was closed after the Saudi government accused the newspaper of publishing “lies”. Legal proceedings were also considered, unless the FT apologised. The leaked cables then showed how five German journalists were to be paid at least €7,500 per month to produce two positive articles per year. In South Africa, the diplomatic communications showed an enterprising Saudi ambassador suggesting to his superiors in Riyadh that an academic be paid $10,000 to counter stories which connected so-called Wahhabism to terrorist attacks.

The government has taken to purchasing foreign news subscriptions en masse to fill the coffers of any friendly foreign media barons in an indirect and discrete manner. At least a couple of dozen newspapers from Syria, the UAE, Lebanon, Kuwait and Jordan benefited from this investment in 2010, and there’s no reason to suspect that the tactic hasn’t increased since the Arab Spring. In November 2011, Egyptian broadcaster ONTV hosted the Saudi opposition figure Saad Al-Faqih, which prompted a foreign ministry inquiry in Riyadh. Saudi officials asked their embassy in Cairo to find out how “to co-opt [the TV station] or else we must consider it standing in the line opposed to the Kingdom’s policies”; in other words, as an enemy of the state.

What are the Saudis so worried about? In short, people like Margot Wallström, the extraordinary feminist politician from Sweden, who spoke out so notably in March. Few Western politicians dare to speak out against Saudi Arabia; they either praise it, keep quiet, or only reproach Riyadh when public pressure at home demands it, as in the recent case of Raif Badawi, for example. Foreign Minister Wallström went further; she attacked the kingdom over its repressive policies against women and freedom of speech, attacking the state system itself, not just individual abuses. Saudi Arabia flounced in anger, withdrew its envoys from Stockholm and barred Swedish businessmen from entering the kingdom.

Yet Saudi diplomatic strategists know that there is significant tolerance amongst Western politicians for human rights abuses from their allies. Though there has been some recent diversification of oil supplies in other parts of the world, the Sunni Gulf states remain an indispensable energy partner. The status quo amongst British and American diplomats is that cutting-off ties in the current transnational security climate would be masochistic.

Western public opinion, though, is increasingly concerned with Daesh, and the accusation levelled most frequently against Saudi Arabia is its financial or cultural links to the group. The inspiring or coordinating of attacks across the Middle East and North Africa remains genuinely terrifying. Each new attack generates the same response; the irresponsible scapegoating of all Muslims and a flurry of influential columnists calling for severing ties with Saudi. Marine Le Pen could possibly be running France by this time next year, and while Donald Trump probably won’t enter the White House as president (and he has lucrative business interests in Saudi Arabia), his popularity and that of the European populists speaks to a genuine sense of panic, a fearful atmosphere which naturally cultivates strong and unpredictable reactions. “We have to review our foreign policy and stop rolling out the red carpet for countries we know to be funding fundamentalism,” Le Pen said in a recent interview, “countries like Saudi Arabia and Qatar.” Radical insurrectionist Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn in Britain alludes frequently to Saudi influence on Daesh. His anti-Saudi stance has distinguished him from the generally pro-kingdom stance in Westminster that has been sustained for decades. Of course, Corbyn is smart enough not to put it explicitly, but when he tells reporters, “I think we need to look at where this organisation [Daesh] is getting its money from,” he isn’t talking about Iceland, or Iran; he’s talking about Saudi Arabia.

Fear of Donald Trump or Marine Le Pen is a concern, but not the only one. General paranoia about the Arab Spring; worrying whether the West is prepared to upset the entire regional bias by siding with Iran; beleaguered in an unwinnable war in Yemen; and watching Daesh threaten its very existence, the House of Saud may genuinely be on the road to reform, if only as a matter of self-defence.

I’m still waiting for my interviewer at the ministry of culture and information to call. I would tell him (it’s Saudi, so it will almost inevitably be a male) that his government has tried bullying and bribing journalists, which may well work in the Arab world for the time being. Yet cultivating genuine Western public support for the Saudi alliance will require legions of Machiavellian lobbyists who will give expensive advice about how they can “reputation manage” Saudi Arabia and deliver nothing. The media might be a powerful tool for sculpting opinion, but the Western public, like any public, are bright enough to see through spin. There are some things that the Saudis could do, though: set free every political prisoner in the kingdom; grant full and immediate human rights to all foreign workers; allow full freedom of expression, religion and association; and then announce publicly that this was being done to defeat Daesh. That would make front page news across the world, and fix the kingdom’s reputation problem overnight.

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.