Thirty years ago precisely, the headline of the first ever Arab News read: “Arab Summit in Riyadh.” Published as a one-riyal tabloid, within six months the format had changed to the now familiar broadsheet. With its green outer pages, the “Green Truth” was born, though its plumage had yet to mature.

The Kingdom was two months away from full telephone communications between major cities, the US had started evacuating personnel from Vietnam and India entered the space age by putting up an “800 pound satellite launched by the Soviet Union” which then existed and was engaged with the West in the Cold War. In the first issue, British Airways took a full page advertisement as “the only airline that can offer you so many non-stop flights to London.”

The lead article reported that observers saw the summit as “further consolidation of Saudi diplomacy and the energetic role it has played in securing Arab solidarity with the confrontation states and the PLO.” Yasser Arafat, President Anwar Sadat of Egypt and Hafez Assad of Syria were to attend under the chairmanship of King Khaled.

Despite the very restrained style — very much written in the passive voice with no attribution other than “our diplomatic correspondent” the message was clear: “Here we go again.”

The telephones arrived, the Americans went, the Soviet Union collapsed and almost to the week, British Airways terminated all flights to London — but the “Palestinian problem” remained.

The first editorial stated, as part of the newspaper’s policy, that as well as furthering the goals of Islamic solidarity and Arab unity, “priority will be given to the Palestine question and the liberation of the lands occupied by the Zionist and also to the restoration of Jerusalem to Arab administration and control.” Thirty years on with this seemingly intractable problem still in the spotlight and many thousands dead as a result of the dispute over land and legal rights, it is hard not to raise one’s eyes to the heavens and mutter “Oh no; here we go again.”

Middle East peace is still a major bone of contention; the violence in the “confrontation states” goes on after a period of brittle peace; the energy of Saudi diplomatic efforts dissipated over the intervening decades, only to be “relaunched” several times to no apparent effect on the Arab League.

On March 23, three decades later, we reported that Arab leaders “decided to relaunch the 2002 Arab peace plan proposed by Crown Prince Abdullah and to form a pan-Arab Parliament.” That plan, though simple and well received by the US and other Arab leaders died from weight of interminable discussion and disagreement within months of its initial launch.

Of the six articles on the Front Page of Volume I Issue 1, four were largely concerned with royal court procedures — the comings and goings of dignitaries received by King Khaled and his court. That introspective style remained current for many years; now front pages reflect a much wider and more outward looking, even challenging, approach to local and world events.

The language of then and now poignantly reflects the change. Gone is the bowing self-obeisance of the 1970s replaced with a much stiffened spine and questioning investigative journalistic style. AIDS, human rights abuses and a critical questioning of ministerial decisions form the warp and weft of the modern broadsheet.

“The Arab News had requested his Excellency ... who very kindly sent us this message;” a sycophantically and rather pompously toned article introducing a message from the minister of information “on the occasion of the publication of the first edition of Saudi Arabia’s first English daily newspaper.” Apart from the nationalistic noun “English” instead of “English language,” the minister sent a message written some time earlier that sort of fitted the bill.

Other quaint and formally polite idiolects dot the prose of early editions. Riyadh Radio “drew the attention of its listeners” to the fact that it would start a new Koran Service...” It was an era of gentler language — even euphemism? When teachers and children might be wiped out in a “bus mishap.”

Typographical and style errors were relatively infrequent, given the hot lead process used to produce the paper and the newness of the paper. The mountain K2 apparently was to prove “more hard” for US climbers and Paul Getty was valued at “between two billion.” They still occur with Arab News as in every other written publication. Rather than pounce on them as carelessness, which sometimes they are, praise them as proof of the existence of real people with all their human frailties that produce the Arab News for equally real people to read.

National and international posturing was alive and well — we reported that China refused to send athletes to the approaching Olympic Games if Taiwan sent a team. Thirty years on, saber-rattling from China has intensified to the point of passing a law threatening invasion should Taiwan declare independence; mercifully, it is still just saber-rattling.

Inside the Kingdom, a reflective analysis in the second issue noted even at this early stage in Saudi Arabia’s surge to modernity that “it is paradoxical that such an austere society should have seemingly, so unquestioningly accepted the ideals of the consumer society that the greatest good lies in the greatest consumption.” This early in its life, Arab News was developing the facility to see the emperor’s new clothes for what they were.

The writer pointed out the fundamental contradiction on which the future of the young Saudi state hung; the conflict between “the Western idea of abundance and the austerity of the moral code and a way of life as harsh as the desert where it evolved.”

He asks, “How long can women play a non-productive role in a modern industrial state based on production and productivity? How long can local ethics and traditions survive in a country that subscribes to the Western cult that happiness lies in the increasing acquisition of goods?”

The answer is 30 years at least, but the cracks are showing. Clerics use the very media they railed against to carry their message; rusting heaps of cars rise out of the desert, but more pour in seemingly endless flow; shopping malls grow like ant-hills covering whole neighborhoods and women are making very significant strides in taking their place in the social mechanics of this industrial society.

Ironically, the following page had a long and prescient article: “Americans Work and Live on Debts all the Time.” Deja vu for Saudi Arabia or simply plus ca change?

(As Senior Reporter, Roger Harrison both writes and photographs news and local stories and specializes in environmental and water issues.)