Riyadh newspaper IT has been said that America has plans for everything, even for a dispute with Canada! This expression is usually said to caution a person that he should be ready to tackle any issue regardless of its significance. It is known that America has such close ties with Canada that no one would believe that a dispute would happen any day between the two countries even though America draws up plans for the impossible. In a similar vein, the fierce campaign launched against the Kingdom and its leadership and embassy by some of the so-called Egyptian media who are nothing but a handful of ‘street media thugs' will never ever effect the historic relations of the “two eyes of the Arab Ummah”, nor their people. Thus, the Saudis and Egyptians will continue to be brothers regardless of all the wicked attempts to poison these relations and sow seeds of discords between the two countries' people. This is the third time and in a very short period that we have been attacked by the media in some countries, but to our dismay our embassies abroad did not use proper media rebuttals. In order to support my argument, I refer to an incident that happened a few days ago when the Swedish media launched a biased campaign against the Kingdom in which it used insulting language just because of news that the Kingdom has launched a factory for producing light weapons, which is untrue. Later on, the news was denied by all the concerned departments with the exception of our embassy in Sweden. I don't particularly ask that our embassy comment on this same matter because several countries refrain from commenting on their military affairs, but it could have at least reacted to the false accusations raised about the situation in the Kingdom. Worst of all when I tried to access the embassy's website through the website of the Foreign Ministry I found only its address and phone number. It sounds odd that an embassy for a country with the size of the Kingdom doesn't have a website, at a time when very small schools in the Kingdom boast their own. Our embassy's silence encouraged the Swedish media to expand on their fallacies to the extent that some of the media circles believed that there is famine in the Kingdom and it needs food aid. A similar thing happened in Germany but our embassy turned a deaf ear, a matter that encouraged many people to exceed their limits. No one in the embassy volunteered to explain the realities in the Kingdom. Again, in the absence of order and discipline in Egypt several hired pens started writing against the Kingdom. They succeeded in agitating the mobs. This also poses a crucial question about the media channels in our embassy in Egypt who could have explained the facts of the matter to the public. All what we saw was an individual initiative from the ambassador, but one hand cannot clap. There is political upheaval in Egypt and we should have had effective plans to send out our message to the public. Defending a country like Saudi Arabia is very easy as we have many things that can rein and silence anyone. I was discussing such an issue about the Kingdom with some westerners and when they did not believe me, I told them to Google the Kingdom's accomplishments on the world stage. The facts stunned many of them when they came to know that the Kingdom tops the world in terms of foreign aid and it leads the countries which provide aid to the Food and Agriculture Organization of the UN (FAO). Not only that but it is also the main contributor to the United Nations Food Program – Fighting Hunger. The country occupies the premier position in terms of the countries which send their students on foreign scholarships. Added to this, we provide free education and students get stipends, there is no income tax and health services are free. Many who live abroad would love to enjoy such benefits. Arguably, the performance of the media department in the Foreign Ministry is very weak. We do not have any integrated plans to deal with such situations, and I suspect neither those qualified in media affairs. It is a high time that we should have professional media tools representing the Kingdom abroad that can portray true realities and react to fabricated gossip on Twitter. __
