BOB GARFIELD: From WNYC in New York, this is NPR's On the Media. I'm Bob Garfield.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: And I'm Brooke Gladstone. Last weekend, immediately upon the capture of Saddam Hussein, the American news media reported celebration in the Arab world.

FEMALE CORRESPONDENT: ...quite widespread. Now, some of these scenes you've been seeing -- dancing in the streets -- that joyous celebration -- that's kind of the tip of what I assume would be an iceberg of people who are more quietly celebrating at home.

BROOKE GLADSTONE:But according to Martin Walker, editor of United Press International, the response has been far more nuanced, with reports of jubilation giving way to tales of intrigue.

MARTIN WALKER: We've heard all sorts of conspiracy theories going around. In Al Quds Al Arabi, the Palestinian paper, they are saying that the arrest of Saddam without resistance, hiding in his small and filthy hole, is most likely a theatre, a finely-woven hatching operation crafted in Washington. My favorite is from Habej (ph), which is the Urdu daily in Pakistan which reported that their sources informed them that, although the world may have thought that George Bush was going for Thanksgiving dinner, in effect he was really having a secret meeting with Saddam Hussein in which the two of them were plotting the nature of Saddam's exposure, and apparently the Pentagon has firmly refused to confirm or deny that bits of Thanksgiving turkey and bones and cranberry sauce were found at the bottom of Saddam's hole.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Did the Pakistani paper suggest how it would somehow benefit Saddam to be captured in this humiliating way?

MARTIN WALKER:Well, they didn't, but there was a suggestion in the Saudi daily Okaz, which has been reinforced in some of the other papers, that Saddam is now looking at his place in history and he really wants some kind of trial. Indeed, Al Watan, of Algiers is warning that a public trial would offer Saddam a very powerful tool of communication. "This man was once America's ally. Saddam knows too much and could reveal a great deal during his trial. His trial will be a thorn in America's side." A point also made by Al Nahar of Beirut, which is saying "If Saddam can stand in front of an international court and tell the truth about how he received the chemical and biological weapons that motivated the United States to invade his country, several officials in the U.S. administration, especially Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, could be running for cover."

BROOKE GLADSTONE: In the week since Saddam was captured, how has that coverage changed, or has it?

MARTIN WALKER:What we're seeing is the beginning of a genuine debate between people who actually do take seriously President Bush's call to Arab democracy and those who just think it's all a fraud. For example, in Liberte, which is one of the, one of the best papers in Algiers, they're saying that of course Saddam's imprisonment is an importance event, above all for George Bush who wants to boost his chance of re-election. But it's completely insignificant for the Iraqi people who have simply undergone a transition from dictatorship to colonization. By contrast, you have in Al Watan, the Saudi paper -- there's an argument which I've never really seen before being put in the Saudi press which is: "The collapse of the former dictator in Iraq and the fall of those who served him for decades could provide some reality for the Arab world -- an opportunity for us Arabs to put a definitive end to military adventures and hollow political slogans directed at people's emotions rather than their minds."

BROOKE GLADSTONE:So, interestingly then, Saddam's capture may be of very small immediate military or political significance but may have sparked a much broader, much longer-ranged change in freeing people to speak their minds.

MARTIN WALKER: I think it's a really hopeful and interesting sign that we're seeing this kind of debate taking place among Arab intellectuals within the Arab press, and not just in the ordinarily, the usually most free sector of that press, which has been the London-based Arab press, which after all was the seed bed for things like Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya and the new TV stations, but we're also seeing it taking place within the pages of the national press in Egypt, in Saudi Arabia, in Lebanon and elsewhere. I mean one reason for this is of course the way in which Bush himself has opened up the whole issue of democratization in the Arab world, but also the way in which some Arab regimes, and in particular, I think, the Saudis have had -- I can't call it a "come to Jesus moment" can I? [LAUGHTER] They've had a kind of a "come to Allah" moment of realizing that they cannot go on in their hermetically sealed little world; that government censorship can no longer control the media, and they're going to have to adapt to this entirely new world that they're living in.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Martin, thank you very much.

MARTIN WALKER: Thank you.

BROOKE GLADSTONE: Martin Walker is UPI's editor.