Seasoned observers of Saudi coverage in the British press in particular will not need to be told of how sensationalist the coverage of the Kingdom can often be. The Guardian, for example, seems long ago to have got it into its head that Al-Qaeda are about to take over, much to the bemusement of most people who actually live here.

In the American press, meanwhile, the passions aroused by the Sept. 11 attacks would appear to have been diverted temporarily toward Iraq. Perhaps their focus will shift here again when the Iraq war is over, as many say the American administration’s might as well...

To be fair, among the latest crowd of Western journalists who arrived in Riyadh a month or so ago are many who have produced articles genuinely capturing both the mood of the people here and underlying trends which are, to a certain degree, determined by it.

Michael Dobbs in The Washington Post knows his stuff; and to have veteran Middle East correspondent David Hirst in Riyadh is potentially to give birth to a refreshingly new and true perspective on things. Is he still around? He published only one pretty run-of-the-mill article — Saudi Arabia is seething with anger and resentment, you just can’t see it, and so on — and then nothing.

An irony not lost on Saudi intellectuals is that the average American reader of the quality US press knows more about certain crucial developments in Saudi society then the average Saudi does — indeed, in certain respects, might conceivably be more aware of what is going on here than what is going on in the United States.

The on-going reform debate; historic balancing acts between the West and domestic constituents; the realities of Saudi economic development or the lack thereof; even self-perceptions among Saudis themselves — I would wager that all this is more thoroughly grasped by the discriminating readers of the Washington Post then the average Saudi reader of Asharq Al-Awsat.

Small wonder that a writer in Al-Watan recently expressed his disbelief, just before the war on Iraq started, at how Saudi Arabia would appear to have become for much of the Western media pretty much the most important place on earth.

So while a debate is raging over there about what is going to happen here, the debate in the media here — if indeed it can be called that — is only a poor reflection of it. Writers here typically take their cue from articles published in Western newspapers, regurgitating the arguments put forward, only then to demolish them with immense patriotic passion.

Such a situation is not only ridiculous, but also dangerous. It is difficult to imagine another country in the world where the people consider their local media an almost total irrelevance, and that old joke about the sports daily Arriyadiyah being the most popular because it is the only one that tells the truth is perhaps more tragic than funny.

And precisely because of that, perhaps the irony needs drawing out: Give an intelligent American journalist in Riyadh a month to do some research and he will write in a more informative, challenging and generally useful way about Saudi Arabia than most Saudi journalists could — or may be permitted to, it’s a troubling distinction — even if they put all their heads together; and he is addressing an audience which, although without much if any direct experience of the Kingdom, has at least in the abstract sense a clearer understanding of what is going on here than the average Saudi college student.

Nevertheless, the Western media has only so much patience for reflective, soft features, and the flow on Saudi Arabia is now drying up. There has been just one bomb blast here since the Iraq war started, and it killed only the bomber himself.

Unsurprisingly, most of the Western journalists who arrived here on waves of expectation have packed up their bags and left. As Interior Minister Prince Naif said the other day, war or no war things in Saudi Arabia are plodding on pretty much as normal — and, you can imagine the journalists saying to one another, at least Amman or Kuwait City have bars in five-star hotels where they can gather each evening to lament the lack of news that day.

But who knows, fate may have cheated them of the great scoop they had been hanging around for. Maybe they’ll be rushing to the airport in Amman or Kuwait City as reports come through of some kind of newsworthy incident. Everyone, the government included, acknowledges that there is a very small group of people in the Kingdom who have the potential — and who hate America sufficiently — to cause a bit of a ruckus.