Puneet Varma (Editor)

Arab News

Updated on
Edit
Like
Comment
Share on FacebookTweet on TwitterShare on LinkedInShare on Reddit
Type
  
Daily newspaper

Editor
  
Faisal J. Abbas

Format
  
Broadsheet

Owner(s)
  
Turki bin Salman Al Saud

Founder(s)
  
Saudi Research and Marketing Group (SRMG)

Publisher
  
Saudi Research and Publishing Company

Arab News is an English-language daily newspaper published in Saudi Arabia. It is published simultaneously from Jeddah, Riyadh, and Dammam. The target audiences of the paper which is published in broadsheet are businessmen, executives and diplomats.

Contents

History

Arab News was founded in Jeddah on 20 April 1975 by Hisham Hafiz and his brother Mohammad Hafiz. It was the first English-language daily newspaper published in Saudi Arabia. Arab News is also the first publication of SRPC. The daily was jointly named by Kamal Adham, Hisham Hafiz and Turki bin Faisal.

The paper is one of twenty-nine publications published by Saudi Research and Publishing Company (SRPC), a subsidiary of Saudi Research and Marketing Group (SRMG). The chairman of SRMG and therefore, Arab News is Turki bin Salman Al Saud.

Chief editors and staff

Muhammad Ali Hafiz and Zuhair Al Fakeeh were two early editors of Arab News in 1976. Jihad Khazen is the first editor-in-chief of the paper. Muhammad Al Shibani became the editor-in-chief of the paper in 1981. Later, Khaled Almaeena served as editor-in-chief from 1982 to 1993. Then, Farouk Luqman worked as editor-in-chief beginning in 1993 for a short period. In 1994, Abdul Qader Tash became the editor-in-chief and his tenure lasted for four years. Jamal Khashoggi also worked for the daily as an editor.

The editor-in-chief was again Khaled Almaeena from 1998 to October 2011. The next editor-in-chief was Abdul Wahab Al Faiz until January 2013, former chief editor of Al Eqtisadiah that is another daily paper published under SMRG and former editor of the internationally distributed weekly magazine Al Majalla, another publication of SMRG. Faiz was replaced by Mohammed Fahad Al Harthi in January 2013 as editor-in-chief of the daily. In September 2016, Faisal J. Abbas followed him as editor-in-chief.

Among its staff is Hana Hajjar, the only female political cartoonist in Saudi Arabia.

Content

Arab News offers a variety of news ranging from politics and finance to sports and social events. One of the good examples of the transparency in media was a commentary written on the first anniversary of the September 11 attacks by Rasheed Abu Alsamh published in Arab News:

First, we must stop denying that any of the hijackers were Saudis or even Arab. We must also stop saying that the September 11 attacks were a CIA-Zionist plot to make the Arabs and Islam look bad. That is utter nonsense. We must be mature and responsible enough to admit that these sick minds that hatched and perpetrated these dastardly attacks, were, sadly, a product of a twisted viewpoint of our society and our religion...We must stop the hatred being taught to our children in schools.

On 8 May 2011, Hassan bin Youssef Yassin, a longtime aide to Foreign Minister Saud bin Faisal, wrote in Arab News that the Arab countries had all failed miserably to offer either democracy or economic well-being.

Controversy

Although the paper is owned by SMRG that is close to the Saudi government, there are some incidents in which journalists of the paper are dismissed by the government. In March 1992, the editor-in-chief of the Arab News, Khalid Almeena was briefly dismissed for reprinting an interview with the Egyptian Muslim leader Sheikh Omar Abdul-Rahman that had been published in a US daily.

The other controversial incident occurred in April 2007, when journalist Fawaz Turki was dismissed for publishing a column on the atrocities of Indonesia during its 1975–1999 occupation of East Timor. It was also reported that Turki had previously been warned by related Saudi authorities to stop his criticisms about Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.

Distribution

In addition to its domestic distribution in Saudi Arabia, Arab News has a wide range of international distribution, including United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, Near East, North Africa, Europe and the USA.

References

Arab News Wikipedia