Wednesday, 2 January 2019

Netflix pulls episode of political news show after Saudi Arabia complains

Netflix removed an episode of the program "Patriot Act with Hasan Minhaj" in Saudi Arabia because the royal family didn't like its coverage of the murder of Washington Post journalist Jamal Khashoggi. The streaming media service said it was warned that the program violated Saudi Arabia’s "anti-cybercrime law," which forbids content “impinging on public order, religious values, public morals, and privacy.”

Via NBC News:

In the episode which has been available since October, Minhaj criticizes Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman, who has been blamed by the U.S. Senate for being responsible for Khashoggi's death in the Saudi Consulate in Istanbul last year.

“It blows my mind that it took the killing of a Washington Post journalist for everyone to go, ‘Oh, I guess he’s really not a reformer,'” Minhaj said, referring to the royal who is widely known as MBS. “Meanwhile, every Muslim person you know was like, ‘Yeah, no s---, he’s the crown prince of Saudi Arabia.'”