Sand pens

The tradition of bloggers I described before, started from the need to have a reliable account of the life in Arab countries .
And this was not possible, due to the fact that ten or fifteen years ago, the press was really not free .
After blogs came, things changed depending on the place .
Governments understood the importance of transparency .

One of those , which in my opinion made great steps ahead, was Saudi Arabia .
There this great myth about Saudi newspapers being just regime puppets .
But this is very far from truth .
Saudi journalists were those who showed a great will to be more open, and they were allowed to do so .
They have a huge ability to analyse facts and situations .
Of course they will never go on barricades yelling at the rulers who own the newspapers .
But they found their way to introduce issues in need to be re-examined by the establishment .
Actually I think that Arabnews and Saudigazette are among the best in the Gulf .

Kuwait and Bahraini newspapers reflect the complexity of the political situation .
Having a parliament and sectarian problems, does indeed make the difference .
Dialogue and confrontation, also on media, is inevitable .
Qatar press, is of course represented by al Jazeera, which both in its Arabic and English versions, were supposed to be the fresh revolution within the Arab world .
And they were, initially .
Then the leadership, probably pressed also by America, realized it was better to have media tackling issues in a certain way .
And the dream came to an end .
Nowadays Qatari publications, in my humble opinion, are just flat .

Then there is the Emarati, which keep their taste of independence, but indulge too much in celebrating their rulers and highlighting how bad the rest of the Gulf governments are .
In Oman the situation is at low levels since the times of Sultan Said bin Taimur .
When Qaboos came to the throne, despite being very liberal, didn't do really much to encourage free press .
The current Minister is very strict (I am telling what journalists there say, not sure it is true . Omanis have this tendency to complain a lot .) and so the quality of press products is not really good .
It's enough to recall that H.M., every time some peculiar public remark from him is needed, he gives an interview to Ahmed al Jarallah, from Kuwait .
Other then being in friendly terms with the Sultan, Ahmed is a good journalist, and of course he's picked not to show that the interview is a sort of advertising for H.M.
But this move gives also the feeling that Qaboos very well knows the limits of local press .
Last but not least, we have Yemenis .
Their production in Arabic is very interesting, but also English newspapers, the times and the observer, are quite useful to give a glimpse of what is going on there .

Most journalists in the Gulf are nationals educated and trained abroad, but many are Indians .
They give a great input, not only to tell about their fellow citizens problems, but to bring ways to write about politics and social matters .