Linked off a jihadi chatroom, I came across a roughly 150 page PDF book "exposing" the Saudi media: "The Secret File of the Unclean Media [al Malf al Surri Lil 'Alam al Qathar]" (no author or date, but the file was uploaded on December 29, 2004). Email me if you want a copy; I don't really want to put a link up to that particular site, for some reason.
The tract describes almost the entire existing Arab media as controlled by the Saudis and as terminally biased against Islam, against the people, against the truth. The Saudi-run media is full of infidels, Crusaders, regime apologists, and even Zionists, evidently. The author of "The Secret File" names names, lots and lots of names, with details of their alleged connections and sordid doings and juicy quotes showing their subservience to the House of Saud, to America, or both. It also identifies a couple of people as not so bad - praise that they probably wouldn't choose to accept! And while it's kind of funny to read, it's also more than a little terrifying, since these kinds of files, in the hands of a jihadi reading public, are the sort of thing which get journalists and academics killed these days...
More than anything, "The Secret File" sounded to me like the radical jihadi equivalent of American conservatives railing against the "MSM" (maintream media). It has the same tone, makes similar kinds of complaints, and reproduces both the siege mentality and the "truth telling" zeal. The pamphlet is full of juicy anecdotes of dubious reliability, and "gotcha" examples of bias and double-dealing by the targeted journalists (which often don't seem to really add up to what they are seemingly supposed to). It wouldn't surprise me a bit if the evidence is largely drawn from the jihadi chatrooms, serving the same function here as conservative blogs do for the "Bias!" genre of exposes of the "MSM". [Note for the easily outraged: I am not saying that "conservatives are the same as jihadists", so save the bandwidth - I am only observing an interesting similarity in the role played by media critique in their political discourse, and in the role of the internet in both.]
At any rate, it shouldn't be a surprise that there's not a lot of love for the Arab media among the jihadis, no matter how many times folks over here equate them.
The FBI is soooooo gonna come get you for your surfing habits.
Posted by: praktike | January 04, 2005 at 02:19 PM
loool...
I didn't know there was such a thing as a Jihadi chatroom, lol...
Where do you find this stuff?
Posted by: MMM | January 06, 2005 at 06:57 AM