Fourth Estate in 4th Saudi Arabia

The contraveners of the government approach to the 4th Saudi Arabia are very fluent in terms like, “The media’s curse on Saudi Arabia” and “Self-tyranny in the new Saudi Arabia”… etc. The affected by the regulations of the new fourth Saudi Arabia as a Major and Lofty World Force on all powers, are agitating by saying those terms joyfully and revere those who say them. The truth is that what I write is not intended to such categories of readers and commentators, even though I am considered one of them rather than being writer, but now I am working hard to possess and seek objectivity whenever I have the opportunity, and only highlight the approach of the Fourth Estate in the new Saudi Arabia.

Dear readers, after you have checked these conditions,you can pre-enumerate the powers of the Fourth Estate, not news channels but the entertaining Saudi channels and the official media, starting from AlRasin Media to 24 Saudi channels.

The other fact is that I do not want to enumerate those powers for you, motivate you to boycott them, or fight their content as platforms.

Here with you, I discovered properly as others did, the media meaning and its significant effects not only on its affected followers, but also on all of us.

However, before saying that, we have to be aware about the maker of this media, the maker that appears to us, who is he? What is his faith? How does he use Islam and how he serves it?

Obsession of the 4th Saudi Arabia

Firstly, we will find ourselves facing a structure of a ruling regime that is very similar to the characterization of the Grand Mufti of Egypt for Muhammad Ali Pasha in the last century, which is

“His religion is Islam, and he governs an Arab country and made it modern country.”

Rather, in our case, there is a system governs a Muslim country and pledges to follow Al-Hanbali school, which follows the approach of Mohammed ben Abdal-Wahhab’s movement, and improves that approach and refines its appearance over time as possible, but the manifestations of this school have been completely disappearing from institutions and gains of this system.

This disappearance peaks in all media platforms in Saudi Arabia or funded by Saudi Arabia.

As a result, this schizophrenia has badly affected on the psychological depth and sacred attachment, if it is correctly called so, of the state whose system governs the holiest sites and cradle of Islam message, and definitely, there are other bad effects that we will talk about them later on.

All this is contrary to the aim of the setter of this different structure, which is to have a mixed image emerging him of balanced Islamic new orientations go along with the permissible acts in the prohibited domain peacefully without breaking the pillars of Islam or provoking you by acting against the religion. Rather using his name and sanctify in order to go with the modern world to compete with it by its balanced mixed approach.

That what is, originally, a frightening misunderstanding for what Sharia Sultan means, for individuals, authority, scholars and all components of society.

Therefore, when we say that our situation sides are measured by the characterization of Mohammed Abdu for Mohammed Pasha, it’s extremely accurate that there is a big similarity between the two systems visions.

Thus, these two systems are cloned copies from western progress and life, scientific progress and immoral freedom for the individual in terms of customary and religion, enabling the personal freedom.

The paradox, here, is that all this happens by using tyranny; neither freedom has been applied nor man has believed in this progress because he has become weak-willed, had no longer resolve and been disappointed by justice.

These are not charges against the regime in the 4th Saudi Arabia, but rather facts that it pride itself to use, aiming to achieve its purpose on people.

Mohammad Abdu said that about Mohammed Ali’s regime, in the form of:

“What did Mohammed Ali do? He could not revive, he just could kill.” Mohammed Abdu continued saying, “When the powerful parties fell down, he drew his attention to the heads of the government and totally killed their “conscience”… He took advantage of maintaining security to gather weapons from people. As he did so repeatedly, the people courage had been corrupted, as well as he dispatched what remained from people life; who had something to say was murdered.  

That means the aim of Mohammed Ali’s tyranny was to reflect the image of state he wanted to build up; he did not want it to be “Advanced powerful country”, but to be “Image for advanced powerful Europe”.

What confirms the words of Mohammed Abdul is the famous saying of Prince Muhammad Salman during a session in the forum of “Future Investment Initiative” held in October of 2018, the Prince Mohammed ben Salman said, “I see the Middle East will become the coming Europe. This is my war and Saudis’. I do not want to die unless I accomplish this aim.” His over confidence and will is amounting to a guerrilla.

Absurdity of the Fourth Estate

Characterization of Mohammad Abdu of the reality of other current regulatory social sides is accurate. However, what matters is understanding the personality of this regime and its steady route in order to figure out the tampering surrounding the content of its media.

The media or the Fourth Estate did not add any power to its sponsoring state neither in local nor international media, as well as it did not show a significant creditability this state could be proud of rather than, in every crisis, breaking the system creditability through a murder. In addition, it did not have a political influence, notwithstanding hundreds of millions of followers, as most of these media stations get their profits from the entertaining and technical sides that gain followers being loyal to entertain themselves, and lead only to destroy themselves.

At the same time, however, it does not work on using this significant acceptance to build up its own conscience meeting all the sides of cognitive extension, rather than it worked on breaking the cognitive side of its follower and restricting him in the available side of his Arab mind.

I wish it made its follower loyal and affiliated basing on its content as Saudi platforms representing a powerful state emerging from the twenty countries, which is the new 4th Saudi Arabia, but rather it made itself a forum to vilify the values no more. Hoping that it may convince that follower’s mind to accept the style of the Western individual life who lives in a country having a secular system. Hiding the rest image of this individual, whose pillars connect him with his system, starting from his freedom in questioning the regime about how to run the country and the legal and security systems, which guarantee his rights and security. All the way to the institutions, which maintain him the reality of the economic progress, educational system and infrastructure, and allow him to contribute to that in case he is competent.

While the Arab citizen lacks most or all of this, as he is required to be like that Western citizen who gets reasonably his rights in a secular civil state as the secularism stipulates.

How much the paradox is! It is not that the media of this Westerner is not just wrong, but it is misleading much more professionally than my country media does, whose policy is based on ignoring all aspects of life except for entertainment and abhorrent superficiality.  

4th Saudi Arabia and the media

The western media has so professional stations, sites, libraries and auditions. All of them are considered as advanced and absolute media in the space of media freedom, taking steady steps to mislead and domesticate its flowers as much as possible by numbing them perfectly, which Herbert Schiller has talked about with a serious logic in his published book in 1973 “Mind Managers”.

The author is not an outsider in this field, as he is a professor of communication at California University.

Herbert Schiller mentioned the Five Pillars or as he called them, “the five myths” that he thinks the American awareness maker relies on them in restricting the critical mass awareness within his nation without direct harsh suppression but rather carrying it out smoothly.

This process is really complicated and long, but it achieves the goals in a depth that is rooted until not only it becomes a culture, but also it becomes the image of logic itself creating a convinced generation, not an opponent, that facilitates this progress through its culture for the coming generation.

The strange thing is that this adaptation mentioned by Herbert Schiller is not a hidden goal of the American nation, but rather they are aware of it. However, because it is so soft and peaceful in all its aspects, except its goals, the individual faces it with confidence and awareness. He, also, believes that he is intelligent enough to look forward to this chain of systematic media objectives, so he is a role model of the negative followers ” the neutral” or the good silent listener of that speech.

The five myths of Herbert Schiller and us

Dr. Herbert Schiller referred elements of any media performance to five pillars, which he called the five myths:

1. Individualism: Dismantling all ties surrounding the individual and convincing him of a permissive lifestyle in which his guide and companion is the outside influences away from his family and environment in order to form his consciences and control the factors of pressure and influence around him. This is what we see obviously in the messages of the Saudi-funded media content made with an inconsistent way with the authentic social nature of the receiver.
2. Neutralizing the mass media: It is not, here, intended to be neutral and objective in the popular sense, but Herbert Schiller stated that the mass media, in its multiple platforms, is going on one direction, which is for creating significant entertaining projects that attract you, resulting spending all your time. Thus, it is pulled of the reality even if it is forced by necessity to impair its service standards.

In the contrary, the news channels are neutralized from the facts, and highlighted to serve the authorities orientations through using the oriented or partial truths with criticizing officials, and revealing some ambiguous circumstances and exchanging politically with the affected figures in the ruling regime, as well as revealing the internal disagreements and the reform claims in a standard superficiality. All that happened is pre-determined in order to convince that they have covered all what is going on, so the viewer do not have to think that there is more hidden news.

Furthermore, they aim to convince you believing in the conflicts between authority poles and you have to stay away from that, being an individual carrying his thoughts for himself and ignoring all what happens. Even if you have a good influence, you have to neutralize your activity and be satisfied with a passive view, and believe that this is the right and safe path for you, as there is media cover enough news for you and alleges the neutrality.

3. Reinforcing the status quo and the nature of the conditions: So that you, the simple one, does not seek on changing the established regime in a way that it reduces the country wealth and orientations to the hands of a couple of thousands people. Thus, you believe that this could be in the structure and nature of the society, non of that is intended. Then you think that you are a part of a societal system in which what is happening is clearly and completely normal. Rather you are better than the countries being under direct dictatorship, so there is no need to reveal the servicing of the big segment of community and to link its destiny to institutional sectors benefiting from its efforts and exhaust its loyalty and awareness.

4. Measuring and creating opinions: Herbert Schiller mentioned documented examples that have been known throughout the history of the American presidency and its mandated institutions. This is equivalent, in our era, to the 4th Saudi Arabia government use of Twitter site and the new media celebrities in creating awareness that this government put and imposed. At the same time, it promotes thunderously to this awareness realism and acceptance in 101% of society.

5. Plenty of mass media: In this myth, Schiller mentioned that having enormous number of TV and radio stations and publications is a clever choice. As a result of that you think your country has reached the peak of freedom and unbeatable. However the truth is that providing this number of mass media is only to disturb the reality that the content of these platforms would be miserable and specific, and most of them would be for entertainment, on the other hand, the news and documentary channels do not reflect the reality at all. This plenty of stations is not a real measurement for media freedom, but rather it is a distractive machines.

We finish with these supposed myths that Herbert Schiller confused us about fifty years ago, taking into account that we are hard working in applying the Western schools.

Fourth Estate and the Normalization

All these ideas lead us to the big problem, which is the promised dramatic and cinematic works presenting, in our homes, the Jewish stories in a historical humanitarian template, which is innocent from the motivations of the normalization and the political direction inflaming the Arab revolution against the survival of the occupying state.

This inflaming and its endeavors continue to the point it becomes a terrible level more than the normalization, which is country- level animosity for this occupier. Thus, the Arab man praises proudly that his ruler never shake hands with Zionists, or his tribe never produces a petty man talks abusively about the normalization.

Well, then the question we should ask this Arab man is what about the rest of Arabs and Muslims? Then he will only reply with a disability that he neither cares about that.

I am not going to go into the technical details because there is no room to mention, and not into the stupid known dramatic game because all of this is evident.  However, I am going to talk about our role before this blatant normalization series.

How to confront media normalization

• Avoid following them, even if you are curious, because the segmented clips will lead you to their goal, and what is attractive in the story is the public image and the idea of coexistence.
• Whenever you come across published seconds of this work, be sure to attach a photo or a documentary clip of the crimes that have spanned 77 years, and there are accounts, blogs and documentary sites that help you with that, including but not limited to: Islamic movement platforms inside the Green Line and the Palestinian Association for Human Rights (Witness).
• Talk, wherever it is available, about the anarchy of the advocate of normalization and its bad influence on the corporates, as well as its absurdity.
• Fight the root of this idea and express its impossibility because we are facing an expansive entity consuming the land-ocean wealth and open spaces in the air as much as possible. This entity is harmful even for the American nation sponsoring it. It also seized badly on the armament companies in the weaknesses of Arab countries at least, where he did that over years by complex networks of trade.
• Finally and the most important point is you have to keep your awareness living. As we are in a tough time at which we are forced to spend all our time at home, do not underestimate to click on a few minute’s video that introduces your family to the crimes and horror of the occupier that never stopped.

*by: unnamed Saudi writer