Saudi Minister of Culture and Information Iyad Ameen Madani is scheduled to open on Tuesday evening the activities and services of the National Media Documentation Center at the Riyadh Marriott hotel. The project aims to establish an information gateway, combining the sources of information for Arab and global media, as well as numerous databases of personalities, institutions and topics of particular interest. It will also offer an archive for media and national researchers and specialists to enable them to obtain information on an urgent basis. According to Abdulaziz Al-Melhim, the ministry's Assistant Undersecretary for Studies and Planning and the General Supervisor of Information Technology, the work of the center will focus on monitoring the content of various media outlets, the coverage of which includes 67 Saudi newspapers and magazines, 920 other Arabic newspapers and magazines, in addition to 167 Arab television channels, 50 radio channels and two million Arab and foreign blogs and more than 20,000 internet news sites and 5,000 personal sites and forums. The center will be the sole facility in Saudi Arabia that would monitor, compile, archive and document all printed and transmitted content, as well as Internet coverage.
