Global Journalist

Dubai: Will media glitter in the Golden City?

By Richard Gross Posted Mar 31 2009

Home / Recent Stories / Dubai: Will media glitter in the Golden City?

The reported $23 million display of 100,000 Gucci-designed fireworks that erupted for nine minutes was greater in scale than the fireworks displays that opened and closed the Beijing 2008 Olympics—combined. If you were an astronaut on the Space Station, you could watch the display from your earth-orbiting perch.

The official opening of planet earth’s most opulent resort, Atlantis The Palm, took place at Dubai’s own mythical island, The Palm Jumeriah, Nov. 20 and hosted 2,000 celebrity guests worldwide.

While the partygoers reveled, bankers and government officials from New York to Zurich watched nervously as the financial crisis that began on Main Street, USA continued to snake its way bank-by-bank around the globalized world toward arguably the per capita oil-wealthiest, construction-boomiest, and therefore most at risk place on earth, The United Arab Emirates and its signature city-state, Dubai.

The local stock market plunged 60 percent year—to-date, and the price of crude oil dipped below $50 for the first time in four years.

The party’s over in Dubai. Has the hangover begun for the UAE?

The United Arab Emirates is a federation of seven Islamic states situated at the narrowest point of the Arabian Gulf: the capital Abu Dhabi, Dubai, Sharjah, Umm al Quwain, Ras al-Khaimah, Ajman and Fujairah. Established as a nation only 37 years ago, the discovery of oil and natural gas has resulted in the UAE rapidly becoming the site of possibly the greatest concentration of per capita wealth in the region, with Dubai hosting 20 percent of the world’s construction cranes engaged in the world’s single largest construction project. Known oil reserves are greater than those of Russia and Nigeria combined.

Dubai has become known around the world for a series of eye-candy firsts of which Atlantis The Palm is merely the latest. There’s Ski Dubai, an indoor ski slope complete with a chair lift. The Palm Jumeirah on which Atlantis rests is one of four land-reclamation projects underway in The Gulf, the most fantastical of which is The World, a series of reclaimed islands designed to resemble a Mercator projection of the globe.

“Dubai has created its own media image,” says Eric Mirabel, director of business development of the Omnicom Media Group. “It’s ‘Wow!’” The media in the UAE mirror the spectacular, sometimes chaotic growth of Dubai and, to a lesser extent, of Abu Dhabi and the other emirates. Some observers see in it a uniformity of purpose.

“At the end of the day,” concludes Ben Smalley, “media in the UAE are commercial. They follow a business model for success.” In Dubai, that means making money, particularly in the print sector. “Here,” affirms Smalley, “newspapers have to meet the marketplace test. They need eyeballs to justify their existence.”

Smalley is editor of the Middle Eastern and North African Media Guide, an Editor and Publisher Annual Market Guide-like publication that is the region’s foremost authority on media and media contacts in the UAE.

In addition to seven dailies in Arabic, English-language newspapers in the UAE include the Gulf News, Khaleej Times, the free 7 Days, The National, a new daily based in Abu Dhabi, Al Ain Times in Al Ain, the Gulf Today in Sharjah, Emirates Business 24/7 covering primarily news of business and commercial interest and the weekly XPRESS.

There are several English-language newspapers, all often seen as suffering from major flaws, in particular being written and edited by non-native speakers. It is hoped that The National, launched earlier this year with former London Daily Telegraph editor Martin Newland at the helm of a staff of approximately 200, will boost the quality of the English-language press.

Smalley, also a former bureau chief of the Gulf News, believes that so far, “The National is well-written and well-structured when compared with other English-language newspapers in the region. And it has brought a breath of fresh air by bringing in experienced Western journalists who can string together a sentence in English.”

Not everyone agrees. A former staffer at The National said she was returning to South Asia to resume work as a freelance journalist after less than a year reporting for the paper. “It’s just like the other (English-language) newspapers in the region. It is mostly interested in business. And most of the reporters are both young and inexperienced or well past their prime.” Underscoring the paper’s business focus is the hiring of Bill Spindle, the former corporate finance editor of the Wall Street Journal, as business editor.

Like most media in the UAE, The National is not independently owned, but rather was established by The Abu Dhabi Media Company, a public stock company owned by the Abu Dhabi government.

Government exercises considerable influence over all media and telecommunications in the UAE. Telephone and internet service was a monopoly of state telco, Etisalat, until the 2006 launch of rival provider du. Incoming internet sites are monitored by an Etisalat proxy server, which excludes banned sites, primarily pornography. Service through du increasingly falls under the proxy. Voice over Internet Protocol telephone services like Skype are nominally illegal.

Newspapers are federally licensed. Three satellite television channels in Abu Dhabi and four in Dubai are private spinoffs of Abu Dhabi Media Company and Dubai Media Incorporated respectively. City 7 TV in Dubai is independent and offers local news and business programs in English. There is one nightly news broadcast, Emirates News, on Dubai One TV.

Arabic and English-language consumer magazines are highly popular and frequently launched. Business, fashion and celebrity titles dominate.

Radio in the UAE consists of a hodge-podge of 11 Arabic stations, seven in English and eight in Hindi, Tagalog, Urdu, Malayalam or a combination. English stations offer little news, essentially playing pop and Top 40 music from the UK and oldies from the U.S..

With only one locally produced daily television news broadcast and virtually no news broadcasts on radio, newspapers remain the primary source for local news in the UAE. Press freedom is cause for concern throughout the Arab world, and the UAE is no exception.

The UAE has established a National Media Council, which, according to official published sources, is intended “to oversee media development in the UAE and support media initiatives.” But the six-person, Abu Dhabi-based Council is chaired by the UAE Minister of Foreign Affairs with the Minister of State for Cabinet Affairs serving as deputy, leading some to express concern about the political makeup of a body with a nominally impartial task. The UAE is among 13 Arab nations that recently endorsed a press covenant that outlines the rights and obligations of the press and specifically outlaws seditious libel.

No one believes that outright censorship is practiced in normal times in the UAE, but Omnicom’s Mirabel says the press engages in a more insidious practice. “They’ve gone to self-censorship,” states Mirabel flatly, “which is a much bigger problem.”

This is no doubt a reaction to the nation’s ambivalent recent press history. Last year, two Khaleej Times journalists, the Indian managing editor and an Egyptian senior reporter, were each sentenced on appeal after being convicted in Dubai Court of misdemeanor libel against an Iranian woman in a 2006 article. The move stunned local journalists and expatriates because it was the first time such an incident involved the local press.

But in an even more stunning response, Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, the ruler of Dubai, personally intervened to ban the jailing of the two journalists and decriminalize the professional activities of journalists. Sheikh Mohammed’s decision was announced by Media Council Head Sheikh Abdullah who praised the move, saying, “The ban expresses [Sheikh Mohammed’s] deep belief in the freedom of the press and its role in society.”

The decision was praised throughout the media and by the International Federation of Journalists, as was Sheikh Mohammed’s urging that there be a speed up in the drafting of a new press law to clarify the appropriate role of the press. A code of ethics signed by the editors of most dailies followed. The draft legislation dimmed the praise by noting that, while journalists could not be jailed and their professional behavior was decriminalized, fines of up to $25,000 could be imposed for “offenses” against the new law.

At an Oct. 15 press conference in Dubai organized to discuss the quality of journalism in the UAE, Gulf News Editor-at-Large Francis Matthew expressed concern over the draft press law, noting it does not address online media and that it contains a clause that would forbid printing stories that would “cause damage to the country’s reputation.” He specifically cited recent dramatic coverage of the stock market downturn asking rhetorically, “Does reporting on the stock market damage a country’s reputation?”

Does this story damage the country’s reputation?

As journalists and editors ask this question of themselves, they may censor their own work further than would the National Media Council.

“The newspapers are too close to the Federal government,” says Omnicom’s Mirabel. “After all, they have a Federal license to publish.”

Some newspapers try to maintain a level of independence by avoiding designation as a daily, and accorded the extra scrutiny thought to be given to dailies, by not publishing a weekend edition. Some of the story choices and reporting of the free local 7 Days are thought by many to be most like newspapers in the West, covering stories ranging from expatriate worker labor camps to animal cruelty.

Ben Smalley dubs 7 Days a success because “based on it’s letters (to the editor) page, people are reading it.” But he suggests its content is not adequate for local needs.

“It’s a five-minute flick-through of a read,” says Smalley, “comparable with the kind of papers in the UK that are available free to riders of the metro.”

The horizon would appear to be brightened by other developing media and media-related enterprises. Cinema is booming. Urged on by the success of locally shot films like George Clooney’s Syriana and the controversial The Kingdom, Dubai and Abu Dhabi are anxious to emulate Hollywood for the Arab world.

Dubai has established Media City, a concentration of primarily broadcast outlets in what are known as “free zones,” areas of the city that offer a variety of business incentives and, it is thought, might someday encourage media to operate on a more Western model. Dubai Studio City has been established as a free zone. The Abu Dhabi Media Company formed a strategic alliance in October 2007 with Warner Brothers Entertainment and developer Aldar properties.

Writing in an Oct. 17 editorial in the Gulf News, Naila Al Awadhi, member of the Federal National Council and CEO of Dubai Media Incorporated, encouraged development of cinema from an Arab perspective. “We need to tell our stories,” she argued. “And building a film industry will give us a powerful platform to do just that.” Nationals and expatriates alike seem riveted by the potential for the worldwide attention that could follow the nurturing of a homegrown film industry. Dubai hosted its fifth annual Dubai International Film Festival for seven days beginning Dec. 11. The DIFF spotlighted Oliver Stone’s W, with Stone receiveng an award at the opening-night gala. The Middle Eastern International Film Festival just concluded its second year in Abu Dhabi, and the second annual Gulf Film Festival will take place again in Dubai beginning April 9.

All these efforts seem to have focused on entertainment media, not on the development of local and regional news. That has been the domain of Doha, Qatar-based Al Jazeera. However, other partnerships and the establishment of an information technology and education infrastructure with foreign investors and firms may have the effect of diversifying media programming output in the UAE.

In Dubai, the Internet City free zone serves as host to a gathering of IT businesses while Knowledge Village and Academic City are home to a growing number of certificate programs and the Dubai branches of foreign universities.

Can a truly Western-style democratic free press grow from this increased emphasis on encouraging the growth of primarily entertainment media? Both Smalley and Mirabel believe such a change will come.

“Right now, I don’t see a sense of mission in local journalists,” says Mirabel. “There isn’t that fire there. Journalism as it’s practiced in the West requires a sense of mission, of dedication, of ambition. Change will come, but [the UAE] will change when it needs to change.”

Smalley agrees, but cautions that journalism education is holding back the development of the local and regional press. “Not enough money is being devoted to training journalists,” he worries. “And English language skills need to be developed for that portion of the press to improve.” But he sees the region’s Golden Calf as its possible path to press improvement. “Business is the key. If change does come, it will come through business journalism.”

Which brings us back to that financial dark cloud snaking its way toward the UAE.

At a Nov. 26 press conference, Chairman Mohammed Ali Alabbar of Emaar Properties, a leading UAE developer, dismissed increasing speculation that Dubai will need to sell assets or seek a bailout from oil-rich Abu Dhabi to service the more than $80 billion in primarily construction debt threatening to bring a prolonged pause to the growth of Dubai and the UAE.

Press coverage of the opening of Atlantis The Palm made no mention of how many of the 100,000-plus fireworks used turned out to be duds.