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 UK paper The Times seems to be enjoying sailing close to the wind in its Dubai coverage, just as much as its fellow Murdoch paper the Wall Street Journal enjoys reporting about the consequent censorship.
Saturday’s edition of the British paper saw references to His Highness Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, Vice President and Prime Minister of the UAE and Ruler of Dubai, which described him as a “benign dictator”, blacked out.
The reference came in a piece highly critical of the Dubai ruler, which according to the WSJ remained otherwise uncensored, and remains available in full
online.
This follows last week’s kerfuffle
over the Sunday Times, which was pulled from news stands – or, for subscribers, censored – as a result of an unflattering mocked-up image of Sheikh Mohammed featured alongside the paper’s coverage of Dubai’s debt problems.
It’s notable that both The Times and The Sunday Times remain otherwise available in the UAE, despite what is being perceived as extremely negative, unflattering and critical coverage of Dubai – but other publications may not be so lucky.
Extremely unconfirmed reports suggest The Powers That Be in Dubai may have inquired about having Egyptian Arabic-language papers Al Gomhuria and Sharq Al Awsat blocked from distribution, again thanks to unfavourable debt-related coverage, but without apparent result.
Sheikh Mohammed and other leaders have gone on record as suggesting that the current panic has been generated by unbalanced international media coverage.
In terms of not further harming Dubai’s perception abroad, though, the emirate and the UAE as a whole will have to tread a careful line between dealing with what it sees as unacceptable attacks on its leaders – which, we submit, both incidents of Times censorship fall under, when seen through the prism of UAE media law – and stifling international criticism of Dubai.
While the latter may be attractive as a short-term option, it would most likely result in a major international media outcry – the media being ever-so-slightly self-important when it comes to one of its own being censored – which would only make the situation worse.
The current strategy of limited censorship seems to be relatively reasonable – while the WSJ and others may huff and puff, there’s little of major substance on which to pin a charge of “gagging the media”.
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