It’s hard to put into words the transformation that Saudi Arabia has undergone in the past six years.
Mohammed bin Salman, commonly referred to as MBS, was appointed the crown prince in 2017 and is now the de facto ruler of the kingdom. There have been notable reforms under his new regime. Women are allowed to drive; the guardian system – under which men have legal powers over women – has been relaxed; and cinemas reopened after 35 years.
This apparent liberalisation did the trick, luring in western businesses, among them youth media company Vice, on whose site a video of a journalist embedded with the terrorist group Islamic State sits comfortably beside a story of a 76-year-old drilling a hole in their skull in an attempt to remain high forever. But then the mask slipped. The CIA accused MBS of approving the murder of Saudi dissident and journalist Jamal Khashoggi, the rate of executions has almost doubled and women’s right activists have been jailed.
So what does an upstart media company on the verge of bankruptcy and with strong financial ties to the kingdom do in response? Recent reporting claiming Vice is blocking news stories that could offend Saudi Arabia raises uncomfortable questions about the compromises companies are willing to make to do business with the kingdom, and the implications that has for British society.
I spoke to Guardian media editor Jim Waterson to find out the answers.
In depth: ‘A lot of western media companies saw a gold rush and charged in’
The media industry is undergoing one of its periodic financial struggles. Earlier this year, Vice filed for bankruptcy protection. Just a few weeks after, BuzzFeed closed its news operation.
“Vice, along with places like BuzzFeed, was one of the outlets that looked as if it had invented something new during the 2010s. It raised enormous sums of money from places like Disney and expanded very rapidly. Only a few years ago, it was valued at almost $6bn,” Jim says.
“Vice convinced a lot of old-fashioned media outlets they had the youth audience captured – that their risk-taking, edgy view of the world was the one that young audiences wanted – and they could do news in a way that interested people. It turned out that that’s really expensive. Things started to get tough in media land; ad money dried up and there just wasn’t a profit to be had.”
Vice is a somewhat awkward amalgamation, says Jim. It combines a news outlet, a website that does “edgy” content, with an advertising agency selling branded content, and it has a host of partnership deals in places such as Saudi Arabia, which want to make positive lifestyle content. Vice’s relationship with MBS and the Saudi government is an interesting one. Its co-founder Shane Smith met with the ruler in 2018, at the time when MBS came to power and was keen to diversify the Saudi economy.
“A lot of western media companies saw a gold rush and charged in,” Jim says. Saudi Arabia set up a number of partnerships with businesses in London to improve its overseas image, including Vice. Separately, in 2019, the Evening Standard and the Independent were accused by the British government in court of being part-owned by the Saudi Arabian state.
“The murder of Jamal Khashoggi a year later caused a lot of them to either pause or retreat because they’d been promised a new western focus, where the country would share their values, or what they perceive to be western liberal values. Instead you suddenly had a dead journalist and a state-backed murderer,” Jim says.
Jeremy Hunt, then foreign secretary, echoed the widespread condemnation of Khashoggi’s murder. Prominent business figures dropped out of a conference known as “Davos in the desert”, while Joe Biden said he would make the country a “pariah”, during his bid to become the Democratic’ presidential candidate.
“A lot of places either paused, dropped, or retreated from Saudi Arabia, including Vice. But the money remained on offer. Saudi could still pay far more than any struggling western company could for branded content or for investing in a news website and basically the finances won out,” Jim says.
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What are the ethical quandaries?
The rehabilitation of MBS was swift and widespread. Biden fist-bumped MBS in 2022, while the UK continues to court the kingdom for trade and investment. Vice secretly organised a lucrative music festival in the middle of the Saudi Arabian desert, with a budget of $20m. The lineup included French electronic musician Jean-Michel Jarre and rapper Tinie Tempah.
“If you’re running a struggling media company, and you can’t get ad revenue, Saudi Arabia will pay you tens of millions for hosting events or for doing a branded deal,” says Jim. “A lot of places are saying, ‘Sorry I’ve got to take the money’, and that’s the ethical quandary that Vice and others find themselves in.”
Of course, this isn’t limited to media companies and governments. Saudi Arabia has spent at least $6.3bn (£4.9bn) in sports deals since early 2021. This includes the purchase of Newcastle United in 2021 by the Saudi Arabian Public Investment Fund (PIF) for roughly £300m, which sparked concerns from human rights groups. Critics have labelled this effort as “sportwashing”, an attempt by the regime to distract from its human rights record. The club’s ground, St James’ Park, will host two Saudi Arabia international friendly matches in September.
“Saudi has undergone a transformation,” Jim says. “You can go to a big outdoor gig in the country in a way you couldn’t have done a decade ago. Men and women can mix to a certain extent. Women can drive. But, you can’t be openly gay, there’s still the death penalty, they still have a record of treating journalists terribly, and human rights abuses are commonplace.
“In the mind of Vice, or the justification that they offer, it’s that, ‘Saudi wants to open up and needs some help, and it’s our place to help them on this journey’. The flip side is: are you legitimising what is still a pretty horrible regime?”
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Who reports to whom?
Jim’s latest reporting says that Vice has repeatedly blocked news stories that could offend the Saudi government. The news company’s reporters say they are unsure if they are able to report freely on the kingdom’s human rights abuses.
“As Vice is hiring so many staff who live in Saudi Arabia , the bosses keep saying to the news division, ‘Sorry, you can’t publish that because of the risks it poses to our staff in the country’,” Jim explains. It’s unsurprising that news editors don’t want to endanger staff in Saudi Arabia. “But if every time you publish something, you risk people on the ground, then you have essentially chosen that money over the ability to do news. I get the feeling that it’s a deal Vice on a corporate level are fine with.”
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Trading credibility for cash
“People haven’t quite realised that we’re playing with a country that has money on a level that we can’t really comprehend,” adds Jim. “The one thing that UK, US and other western countries have that Saudi craves is this respectability that can be offered by buying these institutions.
“So you buy Newcastle United and suddenly you’ve got all of their fans defending your foreign policy. You invest in Vice, and whether that was the purpose or not, you get a sheen of cool.”
The problem, Jim says, with trading this credibility for money is that once its gone, it’s very hard to get back.
What else we’ve been reading
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The Lionesses have done it. They defeated co-hosts Australia to book a place in their first World Cup final. The pressure on both teams was substantial – England’s women, above, faced a hostile crowd, while the Matildas tried to bear the hopes of a nation they’ve brought on with them on their journey. Suzanne Wrack reports from Australia on the nail-biting match. Aamna
As a UK general election approaches, the New York Times delves into whether this could be an opportune moment for the return of Tony Blair. Nazia
Cornwall is known as a holiday destination for thousands of Britons, but it also serves as a setting for a number of compelling novels and non-fiction books. From detection fiction to an intimate travel book on what the sea means to us, Emylia Hall rounds up the top 10. Aamna
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The front pages
England’s Lionesses are fittingly the picture lead in today’s Guardian while the news splash is “PM stands by pension triple lock despite surging costs”. “Sunak – I’ll ease the squeeze” – that’s the Times while the Daily Telegraph has “Priceless jewels stolen from British Museum”. The Daily Mail also reports on the “Gem heist at the British Museum”. The Financial Times has “Underlying inflation pressures keep heat on Bank of England rate-setters”. “A-level pupils to demand appeals over downgrade” – the i just manages to squeeze that on its front, under a near full page portrait of England’s “Wonder women!”. Others give over their entire page one news space to the news from Sydney: “Dare we dream?” asks the Daily Express, throwing forward to the final; “LionYESses” says the Sun; the Daily Mirror calls them “The History Girls”; and the Metro goes with “GOALden girls”.
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The Upside
A bit of good news to remind you that the world’s not all bad
At any given time, Yayra Agbofah, who founded social enterprise The Revival in Ghana in 2017, has three tonnes of fashion waste in his Accra studio. The clothing is just some of the 92m tonnes of textile waste that are created annually, and often shipped to countries in the global south, where they end up in landfill. When his collaborators are done with it, those thousands of garments will be upcycled into everything from uniforms for farm workers to totes bags on sale at the V&A. The Guardian’s Sarah Johnson speaks with designers and entrepreneurs in Ghana, Pakistan and Chile – countries that receive some of the largest shipments of discards – who are turning that rubbish into rugs, shoes and even toys. As one Ghanaian whose company transforms jeans into shoes told her: “We saw there was a lot of textile waste – the landfill and beaches are a mess … We took the cheapest resource and turned it into something golden.”
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