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:
“In those rare days, the press was seldom known to snarl or bark,
But sweetly sang of men in pow’r, like any tuneful lark;
Grave judges, too, to all their evil deeds were in the dark;
And not a man in twenty score knew how to make his mark.
Oh the fine old English Tory times;”
—Charles Dickens (1812–1890)
“The press and politicians. A delicate relationship. Too close, and danger ensues. Too far apart and democracy itself cannot function without the essential exchange of information. Creative leaks, a discreet lunch, interchange in the Lobby, the art of the unattributable telephone call, late at night.”
—Howard Brenton (b. 1942)
“Christianity as an organized religion has not always had a harmonious relationship with the family. Unlike Judaism, it kept almost no rituals that took place in private homes. The esteem that monasticism and priestly celibacy enjoyed implied a denigration of marriage and parenthood.”
—Beatrice Gottlieb, U.S. historian. The Family in the Western World from the Black Death to the Industrial Age, ch. 12, Oxford University Press (1993)