The media policy of Saudi Arabia, outlined in Cabinet Resolution No. (961), establishes principles and goals for media in the Kingdom, derived from Islamic values. It aims to foster faith in God, enhance intellectual and cultural levels, and address societal issues.
The policy encourages obedience to God, His Messenger, and authority, and promotes adherence to the system. Key areas of focus include educational and guidance-based content, news, and entertainment, with an overarching goal of supporting state policy and national development. The policy reflects Saudi Arabia's commitment to Islamic teachings, combatting destructive and atheistic trends, and supporting societal values, Arab traditions, and development. Additionally, it emphasizes the importance of family, youth, language, and heritage preservation, along with international cooperation and respect for individual and group rights. The policy also ensures freedom of expression within the framework of Islamic and national values.
If you are looking for a media relations partner that fully understands the KSA medial landscape, please contact us today.
Media policy in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia
Issued by Council of Ministers Resolution No. (961) dated 02/92/9020 AH
You can find the original Resolution (in Arabic) here – link.
Let’s delve a little deeper:
Article One: Saudi propaganda is committed to Islam in everything it issues, and is consistent with the belief of the predecessors of this nation, and excludes from all its means everything that contradicts the law of God that He has established for the people.
Article Two: Saudi advertising works to combat destructive trends, atheist trends, hostile philosophies, and attempts to divert Muslims from their faith, exposes their falsity and highlights their danger to individuals and societies, and confronts hostile media challenges in accordance with the general policy of the state.
Article Three: The media shall strive to serve society with the goal of consolidating its precious Islamic values, consolidating its noble Arab traditions, preserving its inherited good customs, and resisting everything that it deems to spoil its purity and serenity. It is concerned with advancing the wheel of development and cooperating with institutions specialized in this field.
Article Four: The media shall work to serve the Kingdom’s policy based on preserving the higher interests of the Arabs in particular and of the Arabs and Muslims in general by adopting this policy and presenting it in an objective presentation supported by documents and supported by positions and facts.
Article Five: The media, internally and externally, are concerned with highlighting the unique and distinguished license of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and revealing the blessing of stability and security that God has bestowed on it and the progress He has facilitated for it in various fields by adopting Islam as a constitution for governance and a rule in life. It also highlights what God has bestowed upon it, of sacred service Muslim and the great burdens it carries in this field.
Article Six: The media strengthens the ability to document the joys of the present and highlight the members of the Saudi people, by introducing the colors to the parts of their dear colors and highlighting the bright colors in each of them and demonstrating their integration and prominence in the formation of this color.
Article Seven: Media outlets deepen intense loyalty to the Saudi color, both on land and entity, in the souls of the citizens, make them aware of the gifts and capabilities that God has bestowed upon them, acquaint them with what He has scattered in the past and the present, encourage them to donate to it generously, and contribute seriously to its advancement, reconstruction, and preservation, and work to make the citizens aware of its basic duty.
Article Eight: Saudi advertising gives families the attention they deserve and views them as the basic cell in building society and the primary school in which young people receive their knowledge and guidance and within which their qualifications are formed and their behavior is regulated and it constantly provides them with everything he sees fit to help them. The truth of its message and its interconnectedness.
Article Nine: Saudi advertising emphasizes that the child has a pure and pure nature and a fertile soil, and that the images of tomorrow’s society are glimpsed through the day. Therefore, he must give the guidance, educational, and entertainment programs of Al-Anfal the effort and attention they deserve, and evaluate these programs on studied, scientific educational foundations, and he is trusted to do so. See those with precise expertise in this field.
Shameful material: While recognizing that women are men’s foils, the media penetrates deep into a woman’s innate nature the function that God has bestowed on her and works on her best with programs that help her perform the functions appropriate to her innate nature in society.
Article Eleven: Saudi advertising gives special care to young people that emerges from conscious awareness of the dangerous stage they are going through, starting from adolescence until reaching the age of adulthood. It allocates to them thoughtful programs that address their problems, meet their needs, protect them from all deviation, and prepare them for a sound and strong population in religion, morals, and behavior.
Article Twelve: Saudi advertising is concerned with media documentation through various audio-visual means of everything related to the history and culture of the Kingdom. It is concerned with the collection of documentary and recording media materials and the acquisition of all informational materials available at home and abroad related to the Kingdom and its heritage.
Article Thirteen: Saudi media agencies shall cooperate with educational and social institutions and research centers related to conducting research and media studies.
Article Fourteen: The media shall provide high-level, multi-directional cultural programs for highly cultured groups, in the sense that they meet the needs of these intellectual and cultural groups and maintain their connection to the advanced scientific life and their awareness of renewed intellectual influences.
Article Fifteen: Saudi advertising opportunities to raise the level of media materials in all its fields. It encourages specialists in contributing in the field of their interests and excludes any production that does not rise to the level of good. This is done by a person qualified at a high level of religion, science, awareness and sincerity to prepare them for the circumstances that have arisen.
Article Sixteen: Saudi advertising works to combat illiteracy and get rid of it. It feels its important share of responsibility in tackling it and invests an appropriate amount of its efforts in this treatment on scientific educational foundations. It allocates cultural programs that suit different tastes and ages and elevate human thought and conscience.
Article Seventeen: Saudi advertising is certain that Classical Arabic is the container of Islam, the source of its culture, and the home of its heritage, and therefore it is an opportunity to be careful about the following:
Directing writers and program makers that they must adhere to the rules of Classical grammar, morphology, soundness in expression, and correct use of words.
Directing the broadcaster, program presenters, seminar directors, and others regarding the necessity of using classical Arabic, being careful not to make any pronunciation errors, whether grammatical or morphological, and adhering to the rules of proper performance consistent with the principles of Arabic.
Make sure to purify the media materials that are presented through all media outlets about anything that denigrates the classical Arabic language, repulses it, or reduces its importance.
Enhancing the language of popular programs, which are often presented in the colloquial dialect, replacing the simplified classical language with the colloquial dialect.
Encouraging programs that develop classical Arabic, strengthening it among the public, inspiring the public, and supporting the plays and series in which it is presented.
Contributing to teaching classical Arabic to those among the Islamic peoples who are not familiar with it according to one of the most scientific and educational methods.
Article Eighteen: Saudi advertising shall do its share in supporting the scientific and cultural renaissance in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia through the following means:
Encouraging researchers, scholars, and thinkers in every possible way, including contributing to the dissemination of their productions and paving the way for them to present aspects of their work to the public.
Caring for the young livestock, encouraging them financially and morally, and nurturing them until they reach the desired level.
Working to hold intellectual seminars, literary and scientific conferences, and meetings with intellectuals among the Kingdom’s people and between them and their counterparts abroad in order to contribute to the serious scientific life, open the doors of constructive dialogue, and highlight the Kingdom’s cultural and scientific face at home and abroad.
Encouraging specialized magazines published in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia in particular and in the Arab and Islamic world in general, in accordance with media policy.
Encouraging national publishing houses and supporting them financially and morally to carry out their duty in publishing serious Saudi literature, setting incentives that will enable them to distribute Saudi books on a large scale inside and outside the Kingdom, and encouraging the holding of Cata exhibitions so that the scientific status of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the high level it has achieved in science and thought become clear.
Article Nineteen: The Saudi Press emphasizes the importance of literature and the urgent need to revive it. Therefore, it is committed to promoting its work in this field by various means, especially the following measures:
Encouraging the dissemination of materially and morally beneficial literature by various means, the most important of which are: A - enumerating the programs that recognize its most important books, It indicates their location. B - He paid back its critics by printing it at the state’s expense, and by purchasing sufficient copies of what was printed from it. C- Facilitating the procedures for the arrival of the person concerned.
Confronting all attempts aimed at targeting or reducing the threat.
Encouraging programs that derive their material from literary works, especially in the field of stories, plays, series, and literary biographies.
Displaying masterpieces from the past, introducing people to the efforts of the master of art in the fields of knowledge, informing them of the wonderful achievements he achieved and inviting them to connect the present in this ancient nation with its past.
Article Twenty: The media shall work to strengthen the bonds of Muslim brotherhood, pride and solidarity, and to bond the hearts of one another, by introducing the Islamic peoples and their countries, highlighting their material and moral capabilities, and giving insight into the good that their cooperation and prosperity entails for all of them.
Articles Twenty-One: The Saudi Declaration calls for: A - Arab solidarity and cooperation, uniting their word on truth and staying away from what will break their bonds. B - Defending their issues and the fateful accusations on various occasions and urging them to fulfill their duty in calling for Islam and defending it, as God has honored them with that.
Article Twenty-Two: The Saudi Declaration emphasizes that the call to God is a permanent one, may God protect the earth and those on it. Therefore, it performs its share in fulfilling this solemn duty, following the path of wisdom and good exhortation in its call to God, relying on the betrayal of thought and staying away from all no one saw it as enriching the parties of others.
Article Twenty-Three: Saudi media institutions work with their theories in the Islamic world in general and the Arab world in particular to adopt a unified educational approach that serves the religious and worldly interests of Muslims, represents their intellectual and cultural unity, and unites their hearts.
Article Twenty-Four: The Saudi Declaration emphasizes the respect for the rights of individuals in what concerns them and the rights of groups in what concerns them. It works at the same time to establish the spirit of social solidarity among the people of the nation, develop the creation of cooperation and generosity in the souls, and honor the people with their just responsibility to their society.
Article Twenty-Five: Saudi advertising relies on objectivity in presenting facts and refraining from exaggeration and polemics. It deeply appreciates the luxury of the word and the necessity of protecting it from tampering, and it rises above everything that it deems to stir up grudges and spread discord and hatred.
Article Twenty-Six: Freedom of expression in Saudi media is guaranteed within the Islamic and religious goals and values that Saudi media seeks.
Article Twenty-Seven: In its external halls, Saudi advertising is directed towards a humanitarian approach that promotes the freedom of human beings in freedom on its land and denounces every attack of any kind that occurs against the rights of peoples and individuals, combating expansionist trends, standing cowardly in the pursuit of truth, justice and peace, and combating injustice and racial discrimination.
Article Twenty-Eight: The media policy emphasizes the importance of mobilizing the educated, expert human energies capable of achieving the goals of Saudi advertising, and entrusting these energies with continuous training and evaluation.
Article Twenty-Nine: Saudi advertising encourages the production of good local media materials in accordance with the media policy. Article Three: All media institutions in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia shall adhere to this policy and the rules and regulations issued for its implementation.
Yes, it can get confusing. If you are looking for a media relations partner that fully understands the KSA medial landscape, please contact us today.