Credit

Gulf News had its day today with the news that UAE businessman Abid Al Boom had his assets frozen. The paper first ran the story last week (on the 27th June, in fact) that Al Boom was in schtuck, pipping the other English stories to the post, although its angle on the story was perhaps a little interesting.

The GN story from last week, "Lawyers flay newspaper for slandering Al Boom company" took the angle of 'the astonishment expressed' by lawyers and the 'anger' expressed by Al Boom himself at the news reported by an Arabic newspaper, the name of which GN refused to give on the grounds of the UAE Journalism Code of Ethics.

Today GN's reporting pretty much vindicates said Arabic newspaper (which I can, in an exclusive shock horror revelation, tell you was Dubai government-owned Emarat Al Youm) , although nowhere does Gulf News' coverage today say that. The National also ran the story, crediting 'a local Arabic newspaper' and even Emirates Business 24x7 ran the piece front page but didn't credit its sister title with the scoop.

Which does rather strike me as denying credit where it's due. EAY broke the story, but was never given that credit in the English press. Citing the Code of Ethics is all very well, but I for one couldn't find the relevant part of the code that stops a newspaper crediting its fellow paper for publishing a story.

BTW - that code (linked above) is well worth a read for anyone in, or dealing with, UAE media!