RIYADH: The Ministry of Justice “Judiciary and Media” forum concluded in Riyadh Monday with recommendations for a specialized judicial media and for judicial and media bodies to take part in workshops and introduce procedures to that end. The third and final day of the forum heard calls for specialist legal administrations in media organizations in order to “strengthen the role of the legal culture in media companies”. Participants said that workshops and training courses should be held to help persons working in the media improve professionalism in areas of judicial concern, along with periodical meetings with media spokespersons at judicial and security bodies, with the involvement of academic organizations, to develop the principles and procedures for dealing with the media. The third session of the day heard from Prince Bandar Bin Salman Bin Muhammad, adviser to King Abdullah, Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, who called upon the government to provide the media with “correct information”. “Our media is very advanced compared to the rest of the Arab media,” Prince Bandar said. “The Kingdom's government is keen for transparency and to inform everyone of events, and as that is done through the media care should be taken to acquire information from its sources and convey it accurately.” Tariq Al-Omar, Deputy Minister of Justice for Documentation Affairs, spoke on “media policy”, and said that the media had a duty to “abide by Islamic Shariah in everything it publishes” and “raise the intellectual and cultural levels of the public”. “It should preserve the greater interests of the Kingdom, and public and private rights and media freedom,” he said. “The press should be of service and benefit to society.” The forum also heard the spokesman for the Ministry of Interior, Mansour Al-Turki, present a paper in which he said that while he was not calling for a “codification of the journalist work” he did wish to see some defining of the relationship between the media and official spokesmen. The editor-in-chief of Al-Watan newspaper, meanwhile, described official spokesmen as “silent” saying that they had “closed the door of transparency” with a “bureaucratic mentality”. “They are the source of all information from the offices they represent, but they have become like security guards,” he said. “They punish the media if it does not obey.” Jameel Al-Dhiyabi, Assistant Editor-in-Chief of Al-Hayat newspaper, complained that some ministries gave preference to foreign journalists over Saudis, “even though the former may be of lower status than the latter”. The forum, which opened Sunday with speeches from the ministers of Justice and Culture and Information, was held to “build bridges between the judiciary and the media” and addressed a range of topics concerning press coverage of legal and judicial issues. Muhammad Al-Issa, Minister of Justice, told the forum that the judiciary had “no fear of the media” and that both the judiciary and the press sought “transparency”. He called for a “specialized judicial media to serve both the judicial and media authorities”. “Only someone specialized in legal issues and practiced in judicial media should cover them,” he said. Abdul Aziz Khoja, Minister of Culture and Information, said there was “important and strategic” cooperation between his ministry and the Ministry of Justice, and saw similarities in both their roles by declaring that the “word is like the sword”. “The media and the judiciary both pursue truth and justice, and seek to reveal the truth and expose error, particularly in our increasingly complicated societies,” Khoja said. “The media is a platform which speaks as it wishes, and consequently has a great responsibility.”
