Kipp's finest hour

Kippreport.com, the local ‘copy + paste advertising generator’, sorry, that is ‘news aggregator website’, outdid themselves today with this headline: “Nick Clegg assumes office as UK Prime Minister…"
I nearly choked on my cereal. Could it be? Could it really be a mistake to consult local media before international newspapers? A cursory glance at the calendar confirmed that indeed it was not April 1st. It helps to keep a calendar on the breakfast table for the sole reason of double-checking local news rags: recent reports about Sharjah closing public parks in the mornings to prevent gardeners from ogling women and other inane announcements from authorities across the UAE keep giving me this Groundhog Day sensation of being trapped in a never ending loop of April fool’s day. Never a dull day in the sandlands...

Some time later the headline, and article, were corrected after I commented and pointed out the mistake. My comment of course does not show up. But – no need to worry, Kipp - I saved a screenshot of the original headline:

Recession holidays

Who says government officials are not creative people? The Dubai Labour minister actually coined a new word for the economic crisis – it’s a ‘holiday’!

According to today’s ‘Gulf News’ he rejected recent research reports by several banks that predicted a fall in Dubai’s population by up to 17%, mostly due to redundancies in the real estate and construction sector.

According to Mr. Gobash, workers are not being laid off but simply going on holiday. Damnit, I must talk to my boss. I really feel like going on an extended holiday now. Not gardening leave. Holiday, you understand, is paid leave.

Incidentally, most national newspapers today report on a 4.7% year on year increase in air traffic for Middle East carriers at a time when other airlines worldwide face a dramatic downturn in air travel.

Could this have something to do with many expatriates “going on holiday” from Dubai to India or Britain, I wonder? I think I may have discovered Mr. Gobash’s cunning plan behind all this: To support national airlines in times of crisis, the Labour ministry simply encourages expat workers to take more vacations, et voila’ - air travel’s up!

Do you realize how fortunate we all are to live in a country where government does its utmost to spare us bad news?

UAE Press "Not Free"

Freedom House, the not for profit organisation that monitors international democracy and freedoms, has released it's 2008 "Freedom of the Press" Survey which it conducts annually. Since Freedom House commenced this survey in 2002, the UAE has maintained it's "Not Free" rating, which is the lowest of the 3 possible grades allocated. This year, fellow "Not Free" countries include China, Zimbabwe, Afghanistan, KSA and North Korea.

Full details http://freedomhouse.org/template.cfm?page=362

New paper - the national

Today is the launch of The National, a new Abu Dhabi based newspaper;
Their website is up and running and is worth a look.

"Picture perfect: How the story of Dubai’s other side can never be told"

An interesting read from Arab Media & Society...

"It’s inevitable, then, that I sometimes forget Emiratis may even read my articles. I resort to using British idioms and words I know they wouldn’t understand, but it isn’t something I’m conscious of; the sad reality is that I’m simply not conscious of them at all. Except, of course, when the government steps in to demand that we remove a chapter or an article from a guide or a magazine.

I am tempted to provide an example of this sort of censorship, but I have been asked not to. While the incident between the government and Time Out is common knowledge amongst journalists in both my company and in other publishing houses, Dubai isn’t ready to admit that it breaches the media’s right to freedom of speech. But I’ll allow myself this: the piece that offended the government was a guide to alcoholic beverages sold legally in Dubai; it is neither news nor a surprise that the emirate has licensed liquor outlets within its borders.

[...]

You can blame it on companies being unaccustomed and overly sensitive to criticism, or you can look at the reality of being an expatriate journalist in Dubai. One of the problems we face is that we rarely hear an Emirati voice. They haven’t had a chance to develop one that foreigners can understand or relate to just yet. They will in time, but until then, the expatriate community will have to continue guessing which subjects we can tackle without having to deal with censorship or corporate bullies.

Such incidents of sporadic censorship have made me, as well as other journalists hesitant to tackle the real stories. As mentioned, it isn’t that the stories aren’t there, but you’ll be hard pressed to find a journalist who’s willing to have their career shredded for a 300-word article.

The result is that Dubai’s stories are rarely told. The truth about the conditions within labor camps throughout the city, where the men who toil for hours in the region’s unforgiving sun live, isn’t exposed. And the women who suffer the injustices of a so-called traditional society, while their men indulge in the freedoms of a modern world, rarely have their say.

But like most journalists, I make mental notes of the laborers forced to defecate on street corners for lack of toilets, and the Emirati woman who calls me once every four or five months to remind me she’s willing to talk, but not today; I hoard these stories, knowing full well that if I pursue them I’ll get barred from the emirate. But I’m waiting for the day I leave and have the freedom to write with the sort of brutal honesty these stories deserve."

read more here (article is 2 seperate pages)

Press freedom

Coming on the heels of the concluding day of the Arab Media Forum held in Dubai, an ironic newsreport:

Journalists charged with slander

A court will decide whether two senior journalists were liable for maligning two dignitaries by publishing a front-page article on how their horse was stripped of an award for taking a banned substance.

The Abu Dhabi Federal Court will issue its verdict against the UAE national journalists, a chief executive and an editor-in-chief of a Dubai-based Arabic newspaper, later this month, Gulf News has learnt.

The dignitaries' legal representative, of Rashid Bu Jsaim Advocates and Legal Consultants office, accused the defendants of intentionally publishing inaccurate and untrue information against the plaintiffs.

The plaintiffs are also suing for publishing their pictures in a slanderous manner.
...
The lawyer [for the defense] handed the court a copy of an international sport court's ruling which stripped the plaintiffs of the award. Hashim also supported the court with a copy of the medical report (issued from the International Equestrian Federation) which proved that the horse was given a performance-enhancement drug.

Emirates Evening Post - UAE's evening tabloid - is no more...

Emirates Evening Post - the UAE's evening tabloid - is with us no more, reported missing by Khaleej Times and ceased by ArabianBusiness.com.



I do want to know why publishing is becoming such a risky business. Journalists get injured, even killed in a war zone. I think to find out one fine day that your paper has closed down is nothing less damaging to one's career.

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