Arab News and War Coverage

To sate our insatiable appetite for war coverage, we’ve been combing the Internet for any English-language Middle Eastern media outlets we can find. We stumbled upon Arab News, which is published in English in Saudi Arabia, and has a number of reporters embedded with the US military.

Many of the Arab News articles seemed a little, you know, tainted, so we poked around. Before long, we found them accusing Israel of launching the 11 Sep 2001 attacks in December 2002. That made them obnoxious, but we’ll write that off to the general post-attack hysteria. A little more poking around, and they surpass “obnoxious”, reaching “intellectually bankrupt”. Here’s a well-considered piece of reporting accusing the whole of the US media of being in the pocket of Israel. I like to think of the author, Hassan Tahsin, as their Thomas Freidman… except, you know, crazy. That gem also contains the OnePeople Quote of the Day:

“Moreover, as Zionism is surviving on lies, it exploits every opportunity to target Islam and this is evident following the September attacks on the US. Therefore, the US media that are controlled or dominated by Zionists continue attacking Islam, Muslims and Arabs taking advantage of the fact that the prime suspects in the attacks are Arab or Muslim.”

Incidentally, the parent company of Arab News is H.H. Saudi Research and Marketing Ltd (SRM), chaired by Prince Faisal Bin Salman Bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud. You can watch him duck important questions about the Saudi regime and Wahhabism in this interview on PBS’ NewsHour.