Press
Saudi and foreign newspapers and magazines, including advertising, are strictly controlled by censorship officials to remove content that is offensive. Newspapers and magazines must not offend or criticize the Wahabi Muslims and specially The Royal family, Wahabi government officials or government version of Islamic morality.
Censorship of foreign newspapers and magazines tends to focus on content of sexual nature. Nudity and pornography are illegal in the kingdom and this can extend to inking out public displays or affection like hugging and kissing, the uncovered arms and legs of women and men or anything deemed to be promoting sexual immorality, such as adultery, fornication or homosexuality. Even advertising for driving classes for women is banned.
In 1994, all women magazines were banned by the ministry of information. This move was considered to be related to the pressures of the religious establishment or ulema. After this ban, nineteen of total magazines (twenty-four) were closed down since their major revenue was advertisement earnings paid by the Saudi companies.
Read more about this topic: Censorship In Saudi Arabia
Famous quotes containing the word press:
“Whereas the comic confronts simply logical contradictions, the tragic confronts a moral predicament. Not minor matters of true and false but crucial questions of right and wrong, good and evil face the tragic character in a tragic situation.”
—Marie Collins Swabey. Comic Laughter, ch. 7, Yale University Press (1961)
“Flee from the press and dwell with soothfastness;
Suffice unto thy good though it be small,
For hoard hath hate and climbing ticklishness,
Press hath envy and weal blent overall;”
—Geoffrey Chaucer (1340?–1400)
“Ah stay, my heart, the weight
of lovers, of loneliness
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alas that their very names
so press to break my heart
with heart-sick weariness.”
—Hilda Doolittle (1886–1961)