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:
“An art whose limits depend on a moving image, mass audience, and industrial production is bound to differ from an art whose limits depend on language, a limited audience, and individual creation. In short, the filmed novel, in spite of certain resemblances, will inevitably become a different artistic entity from the novel on which it is based.”
—George Bluestone, U.S. educator, critic. “The Limits of the Novel and the Limits of the Film,” Novels Into Film, Johns Hopkins Press (1957)
“The press is no substitute for institutions. It is like the beam of a searchlight that moves restlessly about, bringing one episode and then another out of darkness into vision. Men cannot do the work of the world by this light alone. They cannot govern society by episodes, incidents, and eruptions. It is only when they work by a steady light of their own, that the press, when it is turned upon them, reveals a situation intelligible enough for a popular decision.”
—Walter Lippmann (1889–1974)
“Our presidents have been getting to be synthetic monsters, the work of a hundred ghost- writers and press agents so that it is getting harder and harder to discover the line between the man and the institution.”
—John Dos Passos (1896–1970)