The Princes and their Media, a Royal Family Dispute Spills Online…………
This website was established by Prince Khalid Bin Talal and a fundamentalist Saudi businessman (Abu Lojain Ibrahim). They are announcing in the link that they are expanding it into a multimedia conglomerate. It espouses extreme Salafi fundamentalist points of view. It professes loyalty to the monarchy, unlike al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, and it claims close connections to the Ministry of Interior (internal security) headed by Prince Nayef and his son Prince Mohammed. In some ways they are closer to the Salafi views of governance than AQ is: a pious person is supposed to accept and support a ruler as long as the ruler builds a lot of mosques and encourages regular prayer, no matter how corrupt or despotic that rulers is.
This site is apparently close to the more conservative elements of the ministry (I am not sure if there are less conservative elements of that ministry). Its main foes seem to be what they call Saudi liberals (liberals in a social and cultural sense and not in a political sense, politically very few are liberal in Saudi Arabia, unless they are in jail or in exile) and the Shi’as whom they call Safawis or Rafidhiyas (meaning those who reject the Sunni orthodoxy). The branch of Prince Talal Bin Abdulaziz al-Saud are publicly known as (socially) liberal, famously represented by Prince Talal himself and his famous son Prince al-Waleed. This Khalid is the fundamentalist son of Prince Talal. They have occasionally criticized Prince Talal but only indirectly, but they attack al-Waleed directly (perhaps a case of fraternal jealousy).
It looks like the royal princes are gathering the strings of various forms of Media in Saudi Arabia (as well as in other Arab countries, especially Lebanon) in their hands. Their possessions cover such known outlets as Alarabiya TV, Asharq Alawsat, al-Hayat, ART, Orbit, Rotana, LBC, MBC, Lojainiat, and many other I have not researched yet, but I will. They control Arabsat, a regional television broadcast satellite. They also indirectly control some other media in the Gulf region probably either through covert ownership or through simple bribes. The various princes are building their own rival media empires throughout the Arab world.
Arabs are having a choice, in their media, of the royal and the extremely fundamentalist royal. There is nothing really in between. A dark era for the media is descending over the region.
Cheers
mhg
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