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Home | Next »  SAUDI ARABIA: Despite 'Desperate Housewives,'
media still not free, according to WikiLeaks cable  Saud
papAmerican diplomats appeared pleased with Saudi Arabia's new
strategy to control editors and journalists, according to a
secret State Department dispatch disclosed this week by the
watchdog site WikiLeaks that offered a rare peak into the
shadowy mechanisms of censorship in the ultra-conservative
kingdom.  The May 11, 2009, diplomatic cable titled "Ideological
and Ownership Trends in the Saudi Media" noted approvingly that
the government seemed to be opening up to a certain amount of
foreign cultural influence in the form of Hollywood movies and
television shows while cracking down on Islamist messages deemed
too extreme even for the state-approved brand of fundamentalist
Wahhabi Islam.  But despite the author of the report's apparent
hope that shows like "Desperate