When my Travelogue about Saudi Arabia was published online last week, some readers bristled.
Why, they wanted to know, had the New York Times travel team devoted so much time and effort to a country whose authoritarian government had committed serious human rights abuses? Why did the kingdom deserve our attention? How much did the government pay us for our coverage?
The last question is the easiest to answer: Accepting money (or any other benefit) in exchange for coverage is strictly prohibited by the Times. ethics guidelines. We just don't do it.
But in the context of Saudi Arabia, I can understand why readers would wonder. In reporting the story, I discovered the extent to which the Saudi government and its tourism officials paid online influencers – those from Instagram, TikTok and YouTube – to visit the country and share oversimplified accounts of experiences carefully organized. Such an arrangement encourages focusing on the positive aspects of the country and leaving aside anything that paints a more complex picture. So social media is full of glossy, one-sided content from the kingdom – which you may not realize, because the arrangements that produce it are often not disclosed.
In my opinion, this is one of the factors that justifies our independent article on Saudi Arabia's new tourism projects: The Times is now one of the few media outlets where curious readers – and potential visitors to Saudi Arabia – can find a balanced travelogue that recognizes both the country's profound changes and its enduring complexities, including its troubling record of human rights abuses, religious extremism, and oppression of women and LGBTQ people .
Why was the story attributed in the first place? To put it simply: it's newsworthy. Saudi Arabia's $800 billion approach to attracting tourists – building vast infrastructure for non-religious visitors in a relatively short time – is unprecedented in its ambitions. Moreover, it is part of a broader set of goals aimed at reshaping both the Saudi economy and its society as a whole.
We have been hearing about Saudi Arabia's monumental efforts since 2019, when it started issuing its first tourist visas. This year, now that the coronavirus pandemic has eased and more and more new travel destinations are available online, we thought it was a good time to check in on the progress.
For me, that meant taking an 8,200-kilometer road trip – alone, without a fixer or translator – that would put me in contact with a large part of Saudi society. I wanted the article to reflect the country as a whole, not just its new construction projects. And I wanted to offer a glimpse into the lives of ordinary people. To achieve this, I visited several fancy resorts, but I didn't stay overnight in any of them. (Some cost well over $1,000 per night, which is path beyond the limit of a Times spending account.) Instead, I slept in communal campsites and booked rooms in budget hotels. My accommodation costs on average about $65 per night.
As for whether the kingdom deserves the Times' attention: I prefer to say that the kingdom deserves our scrutiny. To me, the word “deserve” connotes an element of moral judgment, as if a Times article were meant to be a seal of approval. And judging whether we morally agree with newsworthy events or those who drive them is not part of the equation we use to determine what we cover. (By this logic, for example, people who committed atrocities might not “deserve” obituaries, even if they influenced the course of history.)
Ultimately, my job as a travel journalist is neither to persuade nor dissuade anyone from visiting Saudi Arabia, nor to pass judgment on its company or tourism plans. My job is to explain as best I can what's happening in the country, from the perspective of a knowledgeable traveler, and to provide cultural and historical information to help place the current moment in a broader context.
This is exactly what I have attempted to do – in a visually immersive story that I hope offers a fair and balanced portrait of a country in the throes of profound change.
