How to Lose Your Job at a Saudi Newspaper
By Fawaz Turki

I was unceremoniously fired this month by my Saudi newspaper, a leading English-language daily called Arab News.

It didn’t matter that I had been the senior columnist on the op-ed page for nine years or that my work was quoted widely in the European and American media, including this paper. What mattered was that I had committed one of the three cardinal sins an Arab journalist must avoid when working for the Arab press: I criticized the government.

A very peculiar opinion piece appeared in the April 15 Washington Post. Fawaz Turki, a very tendentious editorial page writer for the Arab News complains about his being fired from that paper. He blames it all on his having written (over many years) about Egypt, Arafat, and East Timor, in terms that the government disliked. Thus, he concludes, he got canned.

I think it far more likely that the Arab News simply grew tired of his usual conspiracy-minded way of seeing the world. All ills of the world, in his view, originated in Israel, or the US, or at least any country allied with the US. Or somebody who isn’t Palestinian or Arab or Muslim, anyway. He exhibited a very restricted range in which he threw stones. If one sought the stereotypical image of the begrudging Palestinian, he fit the bill perfectly. You can find examples of his work by doing a search of his name on the Arab News front page.

So it’s quite ironic that he seeks solace in the pages of The Washington Post. And I guess somebody at the Post just couldn’t resist running a story that seems to make the Saudis look bad. If only they’d bothered to read what Turki wrote!