Saturday, December 01, 2007

The professional standards of news on Al-Arabiya TV. Anchors and reporters at Al-Arabiya TV are clearly under strict instructions to put a positive spin on every story relating to Saudi Arabia. Today, they aired a report on AIDS in Saudi Arabia (it is not uncommon to read such stories in the Arabic press anymore). So the annoying anchor asked a Saudi medical doctor: How do we explain the small number of AIDS cases in Saudi Arabia? Is it because of "social heritage" and religion? To his credit, the Saudi doctor snapped: I don't think that the number of AIDS cases is small, and in fact, we can say that it is quite sizable per capita, or words to that effect.