Media plays a major role in offense or defense. Much of the negative news about Saudi Arabia in the media originates from Western’s sources. As you can see, most of them aim to harm our country’s image with all means of offensive news.

I strongly believe that we have to take a different direction in terms of media and to invest in our talented and skilled people to respond to the kind of fake topics disseminated via strangers out of the country.

I suggest a shift in our media from a narrow local circle into a wider global circle. By this, I mean to speak to the world in all languages and for that we need to put a lot of effort in this area.

We don’t need to convince the people inside for they know the truth, but the outside world will show no sympathy to us because we failed to deliver the message using their language, I think.

The Ministry of Media should take the lead and become the official sponsor by taking planned steps to build a serious mechanism to defend Saudi Arabia against the outsiders, who are bent on attacking Saudi Arabia. The media should illustrate all the facts and data that get intentionally hidden due to various agendas.

Working very closely with social media, I have noticed that Saudis have done a great job to fill this gap and, I believe, that in fact shall be handled officially thorough our official channels including Ministry of Media, Center for Government Communication (CGC Saudi) and also all Saudis agents that are counted as Saudi organizations in media, as they have enough tools and capabilities to bring out the truth to the world.

From my standpoint, a resolution to this issue involves having a set of professionals primarily in English language, as it is considered the mother language of the media. We need to increase our broadcasters, translators, boost public relations materials and international communication, and back news publications while organizing conferences.

“Know the language of your enemy”, is a real need and not just a saying. This is the key, and I’m sure we will find a way. What we need is a media that truly represents our identity as one of the great countries of G20. It needs to represent our love and defense for our country in a distinctive manner that keeps pace with events, by projecting the news truly and the highlighting the way we deal with our social, economic and political cases and issues, by relating it closer to the global community rather than locally.

And because fabricated news and rumors is something that can’t be avoided, especially one about a historical country like Saudi Arabia, which has many enemies, we need to have a strong media to fight our case. Our media must be ready to face the attacks launched in the media in a manner that suits us as a cultured and developed country.