Fake Plastic News

(Photo credit: Wikipedia)

There's an awful lot of talk about fake news online, a background rumbling that occasionally erupts as indeed it has this week. We have all enjoyed the controversy surrounding the US intelligence dossier that purportedly places the future President of the land of the free and home of the brave in a Moscow hotel room watching gleefully as a number of ladies of dubious reputation perform vengeful lewd acts involving micturating on a bed previously used by the previous President of the LOFTAHOFB.

The fun thing about the story, which is more than likely total bunkum, is how deliciously fun it is. Liberal America would just love to believe it. So would most of us, no?

The trouble is that it's getting very hard indeed to sift the wheat from the chaff. But fake news is nothing new: we've always been rather surrounded by it. Was King Richard III really a vile, drooling hunchback who murdered two little princes? Probably not, but we've been just a tad under 500 years late coming to that conclusion. At the time, the spread of rumour was mostly by word of mouth - Gutenberg had only just invented the printing press and printed his celebrated bible - and so it was word of mouth, together with a wee dose of Shakespearean bile a hundred years later, that was to seal Richard's poor reputation.

Gutenberg's press - and pretty much every innovation in media and communications since - merely accelerated the process.

Richard was just one of a million historic examples of fake news, many of them classic examples of history being written by the victor. Sitting in Dubai, the issue of the Al Qassimi 'pirates' comes to mind - opposed to the invading British, they were quickly labelled brigands and pirates and so, for a good hundred years, the whole area was happily referred to as 'the pirate coast'. My own novels have often played with the idea that my freedom fighter is your terrorist and vice versa.

From Gutenberg to the Internet we see the rapidly evolving role of news media - from the invention of the 'newspaper' through to the era of press barons and the dominance of media by politics and big business. Idealistic journalists have constantly found themselves challenged by repressive forces, from political interference through to commercial censorship, our media has represented a combination of people telling truth to power and power telling lies to people.

We used to depend on those solid journalists and their editors to help us better understand the world around us from an informed viewpoint and we were, up until pretty recently, happy to buy whatever narrative they decided to shape for us. If we suspected any interference behind the scenes, we tended to gloss it over. For our media and governments would never tell us porky pies, would they? Our government, after all, governs in our name, does it not? Represents us? Why, then, would they lie to us?

It's not just governments, of course. Big business loves fake news. Advertising and PR agencies have long placed fake news stories in media. You can spot the weasel words, 'studies say' and 'most folks agree' are just two of many sure-fire signs that studies don't and most folks wouldn't. Palm oil, gun lobbies, Israeli settlers, big pharma selling GMOs to Africa - you name 'em, they've been manipulating news by seeding untruths and obfuscation disguised as surveys, research and expert opinion.

As the Internet has whipped the news cycle into a news cyclone, we have seen the erosion of trust in 'mainstream media' and politics become a dominant force in our society. Last year's two most savage political upsets were arguably driven by public anger and disaffection with politics, following on from the waves of disaffection which washed around the Middle East and made their way to Europe with the riots in Britain and Occupy Wall Street in the US. We've seen growing disaffection with big business, too. That wave of disaffection has moved with blinding speed because of the Great Networks of our age.

In the face of that disaffection, our media has been failing - plummeting revenues and the slow death of print have led to staffing cuts and a growing pressure to keep up with the twin-headed Gorgon of Twitter and Buzzfeed. We need clicks, boys, and we need them fast - realtime if you please.

If you want to see the result of this dual pressure to make old media models perform in the new media age, you only have to wander around the Daily Mail, the world's most popular news website. It's not a terribly edifying experience, especially if you believe (as I do) that we tend to get the media we deserve. The difference between the Mail's mainstream content and the stories in the 'Taboola' tabs is getting frighteningly slim. Real 'news' is starting to mimic fake news.

Making it all worse, alongside these pressures we have the very nature of the Internet. Ubiquitous, always-on, filled with people, animals, trolls and lice and all their spurious motivations and agendas. What would have been irrefutable proof in Richard's day (a letter, say) or Nixon's (a tape, say) is worthless today. We can Photoshop images, edit sounds, manipulate documents and fake testimony.

We can harness the news cycle and network effects to put untrue stuff out there and by the time anyone's got around to saying, 'Wait, what?' it's too late. Site X has run it, sites A-W have picked up from site X in the relentless rush to harvest those early clicks and suddenly the whole Web is full of the Spurious Thing. You can probably correct Site X, but that's about as far as you're going to get in terms of actually slipping a cork in the bottle. By about now you've got yourself a nice little hashtag and you're the talk of the town.

But this all has just democratised demonisation. We've always had fake news. It used to be the preserve of the wealthy, powerful and the victors. Now spotty Herberts in tenement bedrooms can do it. And there are companies out there who are harvesting clicks by the million by intentionally creating alarmist rubbish and pushing it with 'clickbait' headlines. Filtering the truth from the fake these days can be a bewildering game. And most people couldn't be bothered.

Which is, to be honest, a worry...

News Management At Twitterspeed

(Photo credit: mkhmarketing)

"Every minute that passes the poison is spreading into the system to all sorts of roots and you need to find a way to cauterize that very, very quickly."

That rather glorious quote comes from a chap at number 10 Downing Street, talking about news management and Twitter. It's carried in this piece in the Guardian. The piece looks at how the relationship between compliant journalists and dissembling politicians has moved to the Twitter age, in particular No. 10's intention to hand out 'Twitter exclusives' to journalists.

The quote is one of the scariest things I've seen in some time. While it recognises the viral nature of information movement in this connected age, it's the characterisation of information as 'poison' by political communications people I find unsettling. We're all enjoying new levels of transparency and demanding, in fact, better transparency from the people and organisations we support. Information as poison is counter-intuitive to that.

Of course the great challenge facing journalism is the direct nature of networked communications. I am in contact with my audience and don't need a journalist to filter or agree to carry what I have to say. Likewise, my audience has pretty much, by following me, decided it wants to hear what I have to say from the horse's mouth. This direct communication avoids the pitfalls of editorialism, whereby a third party decides whether what I have to say is important or relevant to the majority of an averaged audience. The development of that process to a high degree of refinement gives us mainstream banality such as CNN or Fox. But now people with special interests or a particularly strong interest in a given area or topic can go straight to the source, create their own feeds of information and even their own magazines.

We have many ways of presenting and consuming news - one of which is journalists who are now fighting to match information that's flowing at breakneck speeds. Along with that comes a loss in quality of information, with mainstream media dropping their standards to meet the exigencies of time and therefore adding immeasurably to the spread of that terrible poison.

Easy, then - give journalists you can trust to toe the line privileged access to information that allows them to do a better job of analysing and presenting it. That way, you get your side of the story out to some important multipliers and the journalist gets the head start they need to compete with Twitter-speed. You also have a neat control mechanism, because the second a journalist gets into that sort of cosy relationship, they've signed a Faustian pact. Go off message and you're out in the cold.

David Cameron was once negative about Twitter, but his new media strategies have been evolving since 2011 and now conservative MPs are encouraged to "tweet as a muscular force". That's another interesting set of multipliers, because No. 10 can depend on several hundred loyal MPs to RT what the PM had for breakfast. As long as that breakfast is 'on message'.

So what's changed? A compliant Westminster press carrying the government's message, the government media machine leveraging the voices of hundreds of MPs to get a critical mass of 'on message' communications out there at a local level and planned bursts of communication that pre-brief media under embargo to ensure that the 'right message' gets out there.

It's the poison. Like the magic in Terry Pratchett's books, the problem with that poison is it has a nasty habit of escaping. A wonderful example cited in the Guardian piece is chancellor George Osborne's 'Great Train Snobbery', the recent incident where an accompanying journalist live tweeted the chancellor's crass attempt to travel first class on an economy ticket because of who he was. The whole row blew up with blinding force and speed - such speed that there was a press pack awaiting the unprepared and clearly embarrassed chancellor as the train pulled up in London.

The poison had clearly spread...

The UAE Cyber-Crime Law

English: Logo Information Technology (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The story dropped on national newswire WAM late Tuesday - past 6pm, when the papers would normally have pretty much been 'put to bed'. The UAE President His Highness Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed Al Nahyan had issued Federal Legal Decree No. 5 for 2012 on "combating cyber crimes".

WAM story part one, part two and part three.

The new decree includes amendments to Federal Legal Decree No. 2 for 2006 on cyber crimes and is, as far as I am aware, the most comprehensive such law in the Middle East. The National team hit the phones like a wild thing and filed the story with comment. GN ran with WAM.

It's a pretty wide-ranging piece of legislation and includes many specific categories of online criminality, including human trafficking, trading in antiques, defamation, blasphemy, extortion and pornography. It repeatedly uses the phrase "using electronic sites or any information technology means to..."

The law includes some important clauses for those in the habit of posting comment and opinion online. Quoting the WAM file (extracting paras from the whole), the decree:

It also criminalizes acts by any one to insult others or to accuse others of acts which would lead to punishment or contempt by a third party, online or through any other information technology means.

It also stipulates punishments for any person creating or running an electronic site to publish, online or through any information technology means, any programmes or ideas which would promote disorder, hate, racism or sectarianism and damage national unity or social peace or damage public order and pubic decency.

It also stipulates punishments for any person for creating or running an electronic site to raise, online or through any information technology means, that may call for the raising of donations without authorization from the competent authorities.

It also stipulates penalties of imprisonment on any person who may create or run an electronic site or any information technology means, to deride or to damage the reputation or the stature of the state or any of its institutions, its President, the Vice President, any of the Rulers of the emirates, their Crown Princes, the Deputy Rulers, the national flag, the national anthem, the emblem of the state or any of its symbols.

It also stipulates penalties of imprisonment on any person publishing any information, news, caricatures or any other kind of pictures that would pose threats to the security of the state and to its highest interests or violate its public order.

It also stipulates penalties of imprisonment on any person creating or running an electronic site or any information technology means to engage in, or to call for, the overthrow of the system of government of the state or to seize it, or to seek to disrupt or obstruct the Constitution or the effective laws of the state, or to oppose the basic principles which constitute the foundations of the system of government of the state. The same punishment is imposed by the decree on anyone who calls for, promotes or provokes the aforementioned acts or abets or helps others to engage in them.

It also stipulates penalties of imprisonment on any person using electronic sites or any information technology means to call for disobeying the laws and regulations of the state that may be in effect.

It also stipulates penalties of imprisonment on any person using electronic sites or any information technology means to call for demonstrations, marches and similar activities without a license being obtained in advance from the competent authorities.

The new decree also imposes penalties of imprisonment to any person providing any organisations, bodies, institutions or entities, online or through any information technology means with misleading, inaccurate or incorrect information which would damage the interests of the state or damage its reputation and stature.

The new decree also imposes penalties of imprisonment and fines, or either of these, on any owner or administrator of an electronic website or any information technology means or devices for storing or intentionally providing illegal content ,despite his or her knowledge of the illegal nature of the content, or for not removing, or failing to prevent access to this illegal content within the period stated in a written warning sent to him by the competent authorities declaring the illegal status of the content available online or the electronic site.

There are no surprises in there - although you may take some comfort from the last para's explicit inclusion of a takedown order, which at least would avoid automatic recourse to the full might of the law. In the main, the clauses above merely reinforce the 'online' aspect of actions that were previously considered an offence 'offline'.

That last para would, however, be something of a worry to Google, for instance, which would now presumably face a takedown order with the threat of imprisonment for its local representative or a fine for the corporation for hosting 'illegal content' in the definition of the law, which does include content which is found to "display contempt for any holy symbols, characters, figures and rituals of Islam including the Divinity (Allah, God) and the Prophets; for any other faiths or religions or any of their symbols, characters, figures and rituals; or to display contempt for or to insult any of the Divine Religions and to call for the engagement in or the promotion of sins."

What's interesting is how this law will be interpreted and enforced by the courts. UAE law doesn't work on precedent, so a great deal of the interpretation and application of the law in any given case depends on the judiciary. Here, as pretty most elsewhere in the world, that judiciary is going to require a great deal of specialised training and assistance if it is to grasp the ever-changing and fast moving online environment and the technologies it both depends on and spawns.

Anti Social Media

Khanjar, Saidi-type, circa 1924, from Oman. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Oman's National Human Rights Commission has come out against the online commentators and activists who have been irking the government to the point where there have been a significant number of arrests recently.

The Commission's statement, linked here, is a model of clarity. For instance: "NHRC pointed out that there is a difference between the freedom of opinion as a right and the practice of this right in reality. The dividing line makes the practice of this right legal and going beyond it a crime punishable by the law. The rule in this issue is that the freedom of individuals stops when the freedom of other individuals starts."

Right.

The Omani public prosecution issued a statement last week that clarified its position on the issue of opinion expressed online and "calls upon all citizens on the importance of following the legal methods and means for the expression of opinion in line with the legal concept for the freedom of expression."

The problem is, of course, as Omani columnist Susan Mubarak points out in Muscat Daily, there is no official 'line' that defines quite where " the freedom of individuals stops" and "the freedom of other individuals starts". Her excellent piece on the issue is balanced by the Uriah Heep tones of the Oman Tribune.

Article 29 of Oman's 'Basic Statute of the State' guarantees "The freedom of opinion and expression thereof through speech, writing or other forms of expression is guaranteed within the limits of the Law." Those limits are, of course, nowhere defined.

Further clarifying its statement, the NHRC said that "It affirmed that it supports the freedom of opinion, which seeks to achieve the public interests rather than those harming or insulting others."

The 'About Human Rights' page on the NHRC's lovely, retro-style website is "under construction". You'd have thought it would have been 404, wouldn't you?

(Update: I've just learned from @muscati that a female member of the NHRC has resigned from the commission as a result of its decision to make this statement.)

Did Piers Morgan 'Invent' Phone Hacking?

Image via WikipediaThere are growing mentions in media linking my old pal* Piers Morgan to the phone hacking imbroglio that has so excited the British media and parliament over the past two weeks - and which is now showing every sign of crossing the Atlantic in a tide of Murdoch-toxic sludge and washing up against the shores of the home of the brave and the land of the free.

I'm sort of sorry about that, because I'm quite the Piers fan. I admire the way he picked himself up after riding the crest of a wave as Murdoch's brightest, blue eyedest boy, leaving Murdoch behind him as he became editor of the Daily Mirror and then being dumped massively overnight following the Iraqi abuse story that saw him fall foul of the very authorities that had courted him so assiduously right up to the day of his fall from grace. I've worked with him professionally on a couple of occasions and, once we all accept this is all about Piers, he's quite fun to be around. He's very smart indeed, viscerally and intellectually understands the dynamics of fame and celebrity and is very much the larger than life character that manages to project itself into millions of American homes.

He must be getting his wagons into a circle right now. You see, Piers is on the record as referring to some of the techniques used to do phone hackery. The smoke has already started rising, this post at UK blog Guido Fawkes shedding some light on matters by documenting how the Mirror hacked Ulrika Jonsson's answering machine to scoop the Sven Goran Eriksson affair, while MPs have now started baying for Morgan's blood after references in his most readable memoir, The Insider and in his diaries have clearly put him in the frame. This diary entry, in particular, was called out by one MP:

"Apparently if you don’t change the standard security code that every phone comes with, then anyone can call your number and, if you don’t answer, tap in the standard four digit code to hear all your messages."

This, of course, makes things even more interesting - pulling a major American talk show host (which is, love him or hate him, what is keeping Piers in Rice Krispies these days) into the scandal is going to add plenty new fuel to the flames and keep the pressure building nicely on Murdoch - although Morgan's comments don't talk to his time on Murdoch's watch, he does bring a nice splash of star quality to the story and keep it building nicely.

This has turned into the biggest story since the Daily Telegraph exposed MPs expenses - probably bigger, as it now has much greater international appeal. It's a fantastic opportunity for anyone wronged by the media to get stuck in and we can expect to hear lots of calls for restraining and reining in the dangerously unfettered press, particularly from those who have a vested interest in ensuring the media are cowed and sycophantic.

The fascinating question is whether this will bring Murdoch down and I, for one, would be selling any NewsCorp shares granny left me. Quite what impact it has on the rest of the Fourth Estate is yet to be seen, but I'm not optimistic. Parliament reminded me in a queer way of Tahrir Square. Here, again, was a people casting off the yoke of their oppressors...

*The 'my old pal' is ironic. Piers wouldn't know me from a broom handle.

Update: Radio-tastic pal Robert 'Wes' Weston turned me onto this - eight minutes enjoyably spent! Piers gives MP Louise Mensch a jolly good roasting over the hackegations story here: Piers owns MP Video.

Hacks Smacked With Phone Hack Cack

Image via Wikipedia



"...were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter."
Thomas Jefferson



I have been watching with a growing sense of awed, horrified amusment, the escalation of the News of the World phone hacking scandal. From the British parliament baying sanctimoniously for blood to the smug opportunism of Ed Milliband (Am I the only person convinced he's the Heat Electric tortoise reincarnated?), the stony stoicism of Rebekah Brooks to the arrogance of Rupert Murdoch, the whole drama has been singularly unmissable.

Anyone who's read Piers Morgan's unforgettable memoir about his time as the darling of Murdoch's British empire would have had an insight into the snuggling up the red top tabloids (and the press in general) do with British politicians. It's a relationship built of loathing, one trying to use the other in a game of political power-broking and influence. Murdoch's ability to reach out to a huge slice of the electorate made him a political power broker, parties anxiously sought his backing - none more so than the Labour party, which has traditionally enjoyed Murdoch's support (but had to work damn hard for it).

Now the contagion has spread to the States, where a senator has started raising questions and will no doubt soon find himself at the head of a braying pack of political power-brokers desperate to minimise the massive power of Murdoch's US media holdings, including The Voice of Reason, Fox News.

This isn't about phone hacking at all; mercy me, no. And it's not about the freedom of the press, although it raises many questions about that most important of freedoms. This is about breaking the power of a man who was too powerful and too influential for his own good - and whose power and influence have waned sufficiently, because of the power of online communications, to embolden politicians to finally stand up to him.

They want to take him down, baby. And if Milliband and Cameron can stop sniping at each other for two seconds, they'll do it, too.

Will this be a blow for freedom of the press? I doubt it. It's more about the freedom of media oligarchs to extort politicians - and the freedom of politicians to do cosy, corrupt deals with media.

We can only look forward to an equivalent scandal breaking out in the Middle East, when journalists are found out to be lifting handsets and using telephones to call and verify facts rather than just hammering out press release and newswire copy.

BTW, This fascinating piece in Foreign Policy does a much better job of discussing the above than I did...

Emirati Activists Arrested

WAM Abu Dhabi, 25 April 2011 (WAM) -- UAE Attorney General Salim Saeed Kubaish has stated that a group of UAE citizens were arrested on order of the public prosecution and questioned in the presence of their lawyers.

He said that Ahmed Mansour Ali Abdullah Al Abd Al Shehi, Nasser Ahmed Khalfan bin Gaith, Fahad Salim Mohammed Salim Dalk, Hassan Ali Al Khamis, all Emiratis, and Ahmed Abdul Khaleq, who does not carry identification papers, were held in preventive custody for investigation for being found committing crimes of instigation, breaking laws and perpetrating acts that pose threat to state security, undermining the public order, opposing the government system, and insulting the President, the Vice President and the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi.

WAM/TF

WAM is the national news service of the UAE and the above file yesterday confirms what the rumour mill has been talking about for days. One of the men's wife told newspaper 7Days she hadn't seen him since he was arrested on the 8th April but had talked to him on the phone and 'He is OK'. As I know absolutely nothing of the details of this case, there's little I can add of value, except that it will be interesting to see what crimes the men are substantively accused of beyond speech - the freedom of which is enshrined in Article 30 of the UAE's constitution, albeit with the caveat 'within the limits of the law'.

The Tent Next Door

Image via WikipediaAmerican President Lyndon Johnson once memorably said of J. Edgar Hoover, "I'd rather have him inside the tent pissing out than outside the tent pissing in."

It's a quote that often comes to mind when I see the behaviours of the UAE's newspapers. A journalist on one of the Arabic papers many years ago told me memorably that the trick to being an Arab journalist is never to piss in your own tent. Always do it into next door's.

It's remarkable to compare the coverage of the Sharjah Taxi Crisis in today's Dubai-based Gulf News with that in the Abu Dhabi-based The National. I posted about the issue earlier this week - basically Sharjah taxi drivers are being charged to drive at a rate of Dhs0.52 per kilometre, rendering their ability to make money, already limited by fines, charges and high commission targets, almost untenable.

Gulf News buries the story as a side panel to the page 3 piece, 'Abu Dhabi taxi drivers' protest continues'. In the side panel to the main Abu Dhabi story, GN avers that residents are having problems getting a cab as Sharjah taxi drivers 'refused to work for a third day in a row'. The story is also way down the pecking order on the website - Tom Cruise gets a great deal more coverage. I can't find the Sharjah nib on the website at all. But the extraordinary lack of detail in GN is neatly exposed by The National's reporting.

'Hundreds of cabbies quit over new fuel deal' is The National angle. A bit more dramatic than residents finding it hard to get a cab, isn't it? The National story is well worth a read - according to the paper over 400 cabbies have walked out and the regulator is quoted as saying that 'not even a quarter of the 4800 cabbies are on strike' which I take to mean, because I love phrases like 'not even', that at least 1,200 cabbies are refusing to work.

I don't know if I'd be brave enough to go on strike if I were a cabbie here, particularly if I had a family back home dependent on my remittances. I have posted many, many times about the iniquitous and draconian regime of the taxi companies here, specifically in Sharjah because I have my 'inside man', the lugubrious Mr. G. If you're interested in the full picture, here are those very posts. To actually stand up and defy them must take guts - or desperation.

Sharjah's Gulf Today, of course, merely burbles ridiculously about bus driver standards and training in today's edition because covering possibly the largest labour dispute in the Emirates' recent history is in no way in the public interest (Yes, I know the public interest has nothing to do with it, I'm just saying).

Gulf News deserves to be held to a higher standard than Gulf Today, though. And in this, it has failed. Its silence is nothing less than shameful - and its shame is clearly exposed by The National. Which itself fails to mention the ongoing dispute between Cars Taxis and its drivers in Abu Dhabi, now into a second day of strike action according to Gulf News.So The National hardly holds the moral high ground here.

The lesson in this is clear, though: if you want to find out what's really going on these days, pop over to the tent next door for a gossip. But don't forget to wear rubber-soled shoes.

Observer - Sex Shock or Crap Shlock?

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

This article in today's Observer (the Sunday newspaper of The Guardian) did rather strike a chord. I'm not much of a Dubai apologist but have to confess that having lived here for the past 17 years (I've been travelling around the Middle East for the past 24 and yes, thank you, I do feel old) the old place must be doing something right to keep me here.

I'm not about to set myself up ready to leap to Dubai's defence as everyone points out how crap it is. I spend enough time pontificating in various media already without adding 'official apologist' to my job title. But the Observer piece by 'William Butler', apparently recently returned after four years in Dubai, really does take the digestive.

There is a thriving sex trade in Dubai and I have seen it with my own two eyes. A great deal more could be done to address said trade, without a doubt. But if you really clamped down on that trade, along with many other trades in the city's margins and hideaways, you'd start to peck away at the principles that make Dubai a pleasant place to be in - that we're all pretty much left alone to do whatever we want as long as we're reasonably discreet and don't take it too far. That has always been at the very core of the Dubai I have been travelling to and living in since the eighties. They like to call it 'laissez faire'. I'm not arguing that this is perfection, but it's a damn sight better than an across-the-board 'No, you can't'.

So it's not that the piece is wholly inaccurate, it's just that it's peppered with silly errors, sweeping statements of fact that are unsustainable and unfounded assertions. So a piece that could have been a well-argued, explosive investigation into the trade and its many victims is, instead, a badly cobbled together and sloppy tissue of baseless assertion. What a wasted opportunity.

'I asked her what she did for a living. "You know what I do," she replied. "I'm a whore."
I know this is one man's word, but I wouldn't write that line into one of my books.

"It was obvious that every woman in the place was a prostitute. And the men were all potential punters, or at least window-shoppers."
Every woman a prostitute and all the men punters? In a five star hotel bar? Must be a different bar to all the ones I've gone to over the years... How is a prostitute 'obvious' in this way? The burden of proof here is met by some bloke's idea of what a prostitute looks like? What next from the Observer? "It was clear they were all gay"?

"Dubai is a heaving maelstrom of sexual activity that would make the hair stand up on even the most worldly westerner's head."
I'm really, really sorry but I must have been living an unusually cloistered life, a 'heaving maelstrom'? What have I been missing out on all these years?

"It is known by some residents as "Sodom-sur-Mer".
No it's not. Certainly not by anyone I know. Maybe to William Butler and his best friend Yeats. It's a daft epithet and too wooden to be popular.

"Western girls fall for handsome, flash Lebanese men"
This is simply awful. Is the Observer telling us that Dubai, the place where young people from all around the world come to seek opportunity,  is responsible for inter-cultural relationships? Pity the poor ugly, boring Lebanese men, too...

"most of the "romance" in Dubai is paid-for sex, accepted by expatriates as the norm"
This is absolute rubbish. Quantify 'most of the romance'. Nobody I know of accepts paid-for-sex as the norm. Why is this man allowed to assert such complete tosh in a national newspaper?

"Virtually every five-star hotel has a bar where "working girls" are tolerated, even encouraged, to help pull in the punters"
More baseless assertion. We aren't told how hotels encourage prostitutes to help pull in the punters. Most hotels are more than happy to give incentives to FaceCard holders, Emirates staff. But encouraging prostitutes? How, precisely?

"it would be hard to take into account the "casual" or "part-time" sex trade. One recent estimate put the figure at about 30,000 out of a population of about 1.5 million"
Whose estimate? I've got no problem with the number, crumbs, double it if you want - fill your boots. But prove it - at least have a source or a credible figure quoted. Again, we wouldn't let a press release out with that kind of fact standing up a story and I wouldn't expect it to last ten minutes out there if we did. Why the hell is a respected paper running this sort of thing?

"Although strictly illegal under United Arab Emirates' and Islamic law, it is virtually a national pastime"
Virtually a national pastime? WTF? We are, surely, losing the plot here...

"A few drinks with the lads on a Thursday night, maybe a curry, some semi-intoxicated ribaldry, and then off to a bar where you know "that" kind of girl will be waiting. In the west, peer group morality might frown on such leisure activities, but in Dubai it's as normal as watching the late-night movie."
No it's not. This is rubbish. And, again, it's uninformed opinion.

"Middle-aged men in responsible jobs – accountants, marketeers, bankers – who for 10 months of the year are devoted husbands, transform in July and August into priapic stallions roaming the bars of Sheikh Zayed Road."
This is amazing. I am quite sure that some of the 'summer bachelors' do indeed go astray, but this image of a city filled with 'Priapic stallions roaming the bars' every summer is bunkum. Lonely drunks, maybe.

"In my experience, many men will be unfaithful if they have the opportunity and a reasonable expectation that they will not be found out."
Why superimpose your experience of morality on everyone around you, particularly when it is quite so egregious? This 'experience' says more about the author than we perhaps need to know...

"Above all, there is opportunity. There is the Indonesian maid who makes it apparent that she has no objection to extending her duties, for a price; the central Asian shop assistant in one of the glittering malls who writes her mobile number on the back of your credit card receipt "in case you need anything else"; the Filipina manicurist at the hairdresser's who suggests you might also want a pedicure in the private room."
Singling out the nationalities like this is also telling. I have never heard of an Indonesian maid who extends her duties - certainly not willingly. I know one Sri Lankan maid who'd probably give you a good smack for even suggesting anything of the sort. And as far as manicurists (does she have to be Filipina, Observer?) go, those I know would be hurt and offended at the very idea.

"Cyclone, a notorious whorehouse near the airport, was closed down a few years back, but then it really did go too far – a special area of the vast sex supermarket was dedicated to in-house oral sex."
This is clearly crap. Cyclone was a nightclub, albeit one increasingly notorious for the 'working girls' to be found there. But it was not a whorehouse - and it was closed before 'William Butler' came to the UAE. So he is just (as he does much of the time) reporting overheard tittle-tattle rather than researched or sustainable fact. In the latter days I avoided Cyclone, it was never really my kind of place (being a middle aged Priapus every summer, you understand), but I'd love to see the evidence for an area of 'the vast sex supermarket' (whaat?) being dedicated to anything of the sort. And let us not forget, Cyclone. was. shut. down.

It's simply not good enough. This is not great journalism, this is not investigative reporting. It's a poorly hacked together, ill-informed job from a freelance former expat that a lazy editor has just unquestioningly jacked into the system to fill a page or two and it is the sort of thing that people here will point to when arguing that media freedom is a bad thing.

It's interesting that comments are not enabled on the online version. The Observer not willing to countenance another wave of clarification of the sort that expats have helpfully contributed to previous Dubai bunkum pieces?

I'd love to see this shameful rubbish referred to the PCC...

The New Media Law

Image via Wikipedia

This is a depressing column from Abdullah Rasheed, Gulf News' Abu Dhabi editor, today, written on the occasion of the much-delayed debate by the Federal National Council regarding the new Media Law for the UAE. I sincerely believe that Rasheed's words are required reading for anyone living here.

In it, he argues that media freedom has decreased in the UAE and calls for an end to the culture of censorship and silence in response to media that has become so common recently. "journalists battle to get even the simplest information due to non-co-operation of most official bodies" he says.

He points out that the number of UAE National journalists has dropped. And he points to a wide range of other major issues that are contributing to producing a national media that is uncompetitive. That international news sources and the Internet are sought as alternatives by those who feel un-served by the media. "Journalists are no longer doing their duty, meaning that the press is no longer monitoring the peformance of government."

The one point he doesn't make is that media struggling with all these issues are not challenging organisations in the UAE to respond as harshly as they could (and should) be - and the result of that is there is no culture of debate, argument or managing investigative media. You could well argue that a great deal of the negative international coverage has come about because of the inept way in which UAE organisations manage their relationships with international media - precisely because, of course, the counter-critical culture of the UAE is not mirrored elsewhere. To their surprise, UAE 'press officers', and the people they report to, discover all too late that journalists working for international media who are fobbed off or simply told 'there is nothing here' won't stand for it and will not only report, but do so with considerable vigour, too. Worse, they're being aided and abetted by social media. A leaky shark tank is not a minor problem with a malfunctioning valve when consumer-generated footage of an entire mall underwater is out there in the wild, for instance.


Decent spokespeople, sound media policies and sensible media relations can't develop in the absence of an empowered media. Those skills are critical, IMHO, to the future of the UAE as a player on the world stage - and so is a media that is allowed to get on with the job of reporting the facts in service of its readers, listeners and viewers.

More Great News for Media. Not.

Image by the_repairman via Flickr

Gulf News carries the story today of the award of Dhs 100,000 to a Saudi Prince in compensation against Al Arabiya TV for choosing NOT to air an interview with him. According to Dubai Civil Court, quoted by GN, Al Arabiya had "failed to adhere to the media code of ethics and breached the nobility and morality of journalism."

The nobility and morality of journalism? Are they having a laugh?

This was the appeal in the case, which went through the Civil Court last year. It is the latest in a number of precedents and announcements that are of concern to media in the Middle East as it tries to perform something approaching a mild version of what an unfettered media would be doing.

According to the GN piece, Arabiya brought Prince Dr Saif Al Islam Bin Saud Bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud to Dubai to record an interview, which it subsequently promoted but chose not to air. The Prince wrote a letter to Arabiya, which the channel apparently ignored. As a consequence, according to the prince's lawyer, the prince suffered "...moral and social damage on the prince's status as a royal and academician. His fame was affected before his family, students and the social circles to which he belongs."

"According to article 293 of the Civil Procedures Law, the claimant is entitled compensation because the defendant damaged his reputation and social status."

The channel's argument that, as the producer and copyright holder to the work, it had the right to do what it wanted with it fell on deaf ears.

The case goes to the court of cassation now, so all is not yet lost, but this is yet another worrying precedent at a time when bad news for media has been breaking here, in Jordan and in Kuwait.

It is by no means unknown for a journalist to carry out an interview and then not run it - newspaper, radio, TV and all. For instance, if the interview is deadly dull (and boy have I seen a few of those) and lacks any content of interest to the reader. Or if it veers so far off topic that the journalist hasn't got enough to hang the piece on. I have also seen interviews not run because events have overtaken the interview and rendered it irrelevant. And, yes, I have also seen interviews not run because journalists have been lazy or daft and generally just goofed it up.

But the right to run the piece or not, to do a news in brief or a double page spread, to be nice about you or to be horrid lie entirely with the journalist. By undertaking an interview, spokespeople sign up to a well defined 'bill of rights' that includes the fact that the interview may well not run and also may well not run in the interviewee's interest. There's a whole load of stuff you can do to try and ensure that you give good interview and so get coverage. But there are no guarantees. None whatsoever. It's a contact sport and only a fool would engage with media without any appreciation of that media and how it comports itself.

At the end of the day, the journalist (and his/her editor) are responsible for providing us with stuff that we want to read/watch/listen to. It's their job to increase their audience by delivering great content. And so it's only right and proper that what content to use when is entirely their decision.

Now we would appear to be questioning that, and it is not good news at all.

Blockheads

Image via Wikipedia

"The regulations over Internet have a dynamic structure and necessary legal changes are made when problems are detected in implementation."

The above, rather marvellous sentence, was blurted out by a Turkish official when he was responding to the OSCE's strongly worded call for Turkey to reform its Internet legislation a couple of days ago. The call came as the OSCE published its report on media freedom and Internet censorship in Turkey.

If you thought we had it bad in the UAE, spare a thought for the poor old Turks, who have been at various times forbidden to access YouTube, a number of Google sites including Blogger and others, including sites like MySpace and Last.fm. A number of Turkish language news sites are also blocked, particularly, notes the report, those dealing with South-Eastern Turkey. The Turkish government has also blocked Farmville, which is probably no bad thing.

Hitting the old nail on the head, the OSCE's Representative on Freedom of the Media, Miklos Haratzi, said: "Even as some of the content that is deemed 'bad', such as child pornography, must be sanctioned, the law is unfit to achieve this. Instead, by blocking access to entire websites from Turkey, it paralyzes access to numerous modern file sharing or social networks."

The issue is not, let us be clear, pornography. There are a number of provisions for blocking access under Turkish law (stuff like child pornography, incitement to suicide and illegal gaming, for instance), including crimes against Kemal Ataturk. It was, in fact, the existence of a number of videos on YouTube defaming Ataturk that led to the ongoing block of the website.

Along with a worrying rise in the number of sites being blocked overall, the OSCE report also notes a rise in the number of sites being blocked outside of the scope of the Internet law, identifying some 197 sites that have been blocked outside the law in the past year. Blocks were instituted against a number of gay sites, sites like Indymedia Istanbul and a number of news sites as well as advocacy sites for socialist, muslim and Kurdish organisations.

It's a worrying time for the poor old Internet. The increasing ubiquity of the medium and the many ways in which people are finding to use it (including, and I want to be quite clear here that I disapprove, Farmville) appear to be spooking a number of governments. It's not just a Middle Eastern thing, although the recent news from Jordan is a worrying indicator of a tide of thought and opinion among more traditionally minded legislators in our region - the Australians have been going on about instituting wide-ranging blocking powers. And we all know what's been happening in China.

It's all very well slapping freedoms in a constitution. But when people start taking 'freedom' too literally, it appears they need a little help from the law... or even outside the law, in Turkey's case...

No Comment

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

The Hetta e-magazine court case (reported by Gulf News here in case you hadn't heard of it) is a worrying precedent.

A judgement against Hetta (Hetta is a headscarf or Keffiyeh) has been reached by the Abu Dhabi Court of Appeals in the defamation case lodged by the Abu Dhabi Media Company (the owners, interestingly, of a number of media outlets, including newspaper The National) . The case centres around a comment made on an article by a reader. This is the important bit, the article linked here (you'll have to spikka da Arabi) attacking Abu Dhabi Media Company's hiring policies, is not the issue - the alleged defamation came as a reader-submitted comment posted against the article.

That precedent would potentially mean that any online site (including, *gulp*, blogs) in the UAE would be held legally liable for any content posted by commenters to the site. That would have an immediate and drastic effect on any form of open or free speech (no, I'm not interested in arguments about how little of that there is). It would also make us all moderators, or 'censors' of content posted on our sites by the public.

“The decision taken in this case against an independent news website is clearly disproportionate,” Reporters Without Borders said in a statement, in full here. “Why close an entire website for a month when only a few comments posted by readers were at issue and only its editor was being blamed? And before going to court, why didn’t the plaintiff ask Hetta.com’s management to remove the comments in a spirit of conciliation?”

Why indeed. And a media owner, at that.

Hetta's lawyer is taking the case to the top, a final appeal is to be filed with the Federal Supreme Court, according to GN, so the fat lady hasn't sung. Let's hope she's got a reasonable tune when she does.

If you add to this the result of the defamation case in the UK against Gulf News a while ago, you also have a precedent that anyone who has business interests in the UAE and considers themselves defamed in the UAE by any commenter on any global medium accessible here, they could possibly launch a case in the UAE court. Far fetched? Oh, do I hope so.

This alarming judgement, by the way, comes a week after Jordan's decision to apply its press and publishing law to online activity. That law, similarly, would hold bloggers and other online sites responsible for user comments made on articles - treating them effectively as letters to the Letters Page of a newspaper - an editorial responsibility.

But here - this is possibly the really interesting bit that affects millions rather than a raggle-taggle bunch of bloggers and online publishers - we reach the edge of gibbering insanity. If I'm responsible in law for what you write on my blog, am I just as responsible for a comment you leave on my Facebook page?

Both of these moves are subject to a final decision, so there's a chance for reason to prevail. But it's never been more likely that those cautious little green shoots of commentary and dialogue could well be snuffed out in the Middle East.

Association to Stand Behind "Good Bloggers"

Well, it's official. Bloggers facing legal action will be protected by the UAE Journalist's Association if they abide by the ethical code of the association, wash behind their ears and are kind to small furry animals.

Mohammed Yousuf, the head of the Association, told Emirates Business 24x7's Dimah Hamadeh:

"Bloggers and "virtual" journalists have the right to be protected by the Journalists' Association, provided they abide by the ethics code, including stating of facts and sources of information, avoiding defaming without tangible proof, or provoking hostility arising from religious, sectarian or race discriminations."

Yousuf, displaying a remarkable lack of understanding regarding the 'online world', goes on to tell Hamadeh that audiences still mistrust online media, a lack of credibility that leads to online often being perceived as a channel for spreading rumours and destroying reputations.

Tell that to Arabianbusiness.com, Zawya.com and maktoob.com, will you? Or to the many, many people that intelligently sift online sources to arrive at an informed and wider picture than is often available through the 'traditional' media that Yousuf freely admits in the piece are subject to a greater degree of censorship than online media.

Yousuf tells Hamadeh (who must have been struggling to hold a straight face) that the Association's mission is to "invite bloggers and online reporters to adopt professional standards."

All this on the sidelines of a two-day event that invited bloggers from the UAE and around the region to discuss the role of new media and journalism. I didn't see anyone Tweeting from the conference and I don't know of any bloggers that were there. I certainly didn't get an invite (snif) - did you?

Isn't it funny that the UAE's bloggers NEVER seem to get invited to events where online and 'new' media are being discussed in... err... the UAE?

But I think we're missing quite a big thing in all this talk of protecting bloggers who abide by the ethical code of the UAE Journalists' Association.

Bloggers. Are. Not. Journalists.

The BBC's eminent Hossam Sokkari rather confounded the Arab Media Forum's Token Blogger, Algerian Issam Hamoud, by asking him if he had always wanted to be a journalist - as if being a blogger is something that can only be explained by a frustrated urge to journalism.

I know some excellent journalists that have become bloggers and some excellent journalists who blog alongside their more traditional, more papery, roles. And I know many excellent bloggers that are not, don't want to be and wouldn't dream of being journalists.

I do wish they'd get this into their heads! Bloggers. Are. Not. Journalists.

This is a new thing, not another face of an old thing. It follows new rules - and raises ethical questions and questions of practice that are not touched by old codifications of good journalistic practice.

While I'm sure the UAE Journalists' Association's offer is kindly meant, it's barking up quite the wrong tree.

UPDATE
This story in Gulf News today, that Saudi Arabia is mulling putting an electronic publications law on the anvil, is another and slightly more worrying take on this very topic. Take a look here.

Sentiment on the The Arab Tweet

Image by Getty Images via Daylife

I didn’t attend the ‘New Media’ session of The Arab Media Forum yesterday ( I served my time in the morning, alright?), but then I didn’t need to. Several people I respect were in the audience and were Tweeting highlights throughout the session. One of them was a colleague, one was another PR person I chat to and two were media people I know well.

I can wait for further analysis of the session, I can take my time. I got the high points, the headlines, as they happened – and from several different sources and viewpoints at that.

The people whose commentary on the proceedings was influencing hundreds, in fact going into the thousands, of people were not the ones on the stage talking at the Forum, they were in the audience. Between them, the Tweeters were talking to an audience of more people than the guys onstage with the microphones. Sure, the BBC will broadcast the session in a while – but we’ve already discussed it, deliberated it, shared it ‘on the record’ with the entire Internet and moved on.

And if that doesn’t give you pause for thought, I give up.

Incidentally, the Twitter users were likely the only people in the room full of hundreds of media people that knew, as they sat down to the session, that Roxanne Saberi had been released from the terrible, feared Evin prison in Tehran – that her father was actually on the way to pick her up at that very moment. The breaking news was flying around Twitter as the conference session started. Oh! And also the news that not only had the Pope called for a two-state solution in Palestine but that the Palestinian Authority press centre had been forced to shut down by the Israelis.

And it doesn’t take a newsroom of hundreds to do that. Or a ‘publishing house’. Or a ‘printing press’. Or an ‘editor in chief’.

Oddly, our little band of Twitterers probably represented the few people in the room that actually, genuinely cared about news like Roxanne Saberi and the PA media centre. Freedom is an Internet thing – the ‘old world’ is more reconciled to its lack.

So what did happen in the ‘new media’ session?

The 'traditional' media, debated their credibility and asked The Lone Blogger why he blogged ("Did you always want to be a journalist?"), comforting themselves with the fact that 'citizen journalism' wasn't as reliable as a 'real journalist'.

They, and Seymour Hersh, appear to have missed the point. The world is changing - it's not about bloggers wanting to be journalists. It's much, much bigger than that and it's time that many of our media woke up to the smell of coffee.

BTW, a Gulf News (600g) survey today, commissioned from IPSOS of some 2,000 people, showed that 76.2 of respondents strongly agreed with the statement 'The Internet helps me to keep up to date with the latest news'. GN's headline for the piece?

"Gulf News Stays Ahead of the Pack"

Which is fine, as long as your pack's not heading for the edge of a cliff...

The Arab Media Forum

Image by madmonk via Flickr

Today marked the start of the 8th Arab Media Forum. I'm quite fond of said forum, if only because it marked the start of this blog, back with this post which has always made me smile when I read it.

So I'm a simpleton. Get over it.

The keynote address at this year's gig was given by the Secretary General of the Arab League, Amr Moussa. He said a number of interesting things and, thanks to the simultaneous translation, a couple of slightly strange ones. There was one passage about dark oceans and creatures feeding on each other that had me slightly bewildered, but we soon found the track again.

(Offtopic, Moussa said that he was impressed by the life and verve he found in Dubai after having read so many negative reports in international media. He got a laugh out of his host, Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid, which was nice to see to be honest.)

Moussa set the scene for the rest of the forum, making the point that the Arab World faced challenges in the evolution of its media, particularly with the transition taking place between online and print media, "The Arab World is still launching newspapers while elsewhere in the world, newspapers are failing" he said, talking about the movement of paper to electronic media.

Its funny that this thinking persists - that we're going to stop using paper and just move into being nicely regulateable and licensable entities, identifieable online media houses. It denies the very real atomisation that is taking place as a result of the boom in consumer generated media and content. The concept of media ownership is being redefined.

Just before Moussa came onstage, a panel session had taken place with, among distinguished others, Abdul Hamid Ahmad, Editor in Chief of Gulf News (540g), who pointed out that venerable, 150-year-old institutions like the great American newspapers were shutting down and wondered what would take their place.

As if the process of their decline wasn't being driven by their replacement.

Portentous statements will be made, great declarations will be delivered, many issues will be debated. But the winds of change sweeping around the world, the process of disintermediation and the tools that are driving new ways of sharing information, thoughts, collaboration and innovation are not going to be among the many things the Forum considers seriously. The Middle East media, remember, is still launching newspapers.

It's as if we're making a virtue of being behind the curve - a curve we continue to lag ever more as we fail to teach online skills in schools and retard adoption through protectionism, mad pricing and content blocking.

I get the feeling that this is going to be something of a theme for this forum which features just a single session on online media, tucked in at the end of day one's proceedings. This panel (led by the BBC's Hossam Al Sokkari) will feature Google's regional manager and is the reason the forum will get to hear from its one, lone, blogger - an Algerian called Issam Hamoud.

One social media figure among all those media glitterati in this two-day media-fest. One 'public voice'. One ambassador for the 'new media'.

It reminds me a little of Michael Moorcock's excellent Brothel In Rosenstrasse (The book is, incidentally, most certainly NSFW, part of its quirky charm). The enemy army is on the borders of the city, but life goes on inside the brothel, unchallenged for the moment by the changes taking place outside, a bright burning of licentiousness in negation of the great and inevitable truth that's all around.

Until, suddenly, everything is rapidly, inevitably swept away along with the world that existed before it.

Legacy media is not going to be killed by social media, despite the much-publicised declines and closures. But it is being transformed by it - and those who are not driving that change are likely going to be swept aside by it.

The Arab Media Forum has, IMHO, missed a trick. So, arguably, has the Arab Media.

But Amr Moussa knows what's going on, at least...

Donkeys and The Media

Image via Wikipedia

Gulf News makes donkeys of us all today.

Back up to 640g after some recent disastrous forays into the 500s and even 400s, your favourite newspaper trumpets 'Awards Muled for English Media' on its front page earpiece.

Something being muled is certainly a change from 'on the anvil', the favourite phrase among GN sub-editors for 'not ready yet'. So what is taking so much muling?

The answer is to be found in a page 7 interview with Mariam Bin Fahed, the Director of Dubai Press Club. Apart from confirming some Great Truths:

"There are some issues we don't want to discuss."

"If we see that the x-marks are higher, we avoid discussing the subject."

"There was an article that was too sensitive in 2006 and it was scored number one by the judges When it came to the senior panel members, they had to hold it back and the award went to the second candidate."

"You don't want to encourage negative acts."

The interview also contains the suprising assertion that "journalists are even writing articles specifically for the award now."

Needless to say, with many journalists in Egypt, for example, holding down two jobs to make ends meet, many of the region's vastly under-paid press would write articles about the pleasures of keeping bunny rabbits and making daisy chains if you offered them $15,000.

They'd probably write about bloody Modhesh for that much money.

Anyway, in the interview Mariam Bin Fahd didn't rule out an award for English language media that serve the region, hence the claim that the Press Club is muling an award.

It'll be interesting to see what wins this years Arabic awards given the clear signal in the piece that anything controversial, the result of great, ground-breaking journalism for instance, likely won't be muled at all...

The New UAE Media Law is .Not. Law

Image by Amy.Ng via Flickr

The New UAE Media Law has been passed by the Federal National Council, according to the Emirates news agency WAM.

The WAM story, filed just now, says that some 60% of the law has been modified, but doesn't say how the law has been modified or indeed whether the controversial 'harm to the economy' clause has been softened or clarified - or whether the 60% modifications were to the version of the law that's being debated or whether they were the original revisions that took place in the two years the law was, to use Gulf News subs' favourite phrase, 'on the anvil'.

We'll doubtless see more on this tomorrow. The law itself has provoked widespread media concern - and it does not, as far as I am aware or can find out, recognise the 'e-world' (for instance bloggers, forum commentators or, say, Twitterers) in any way. So whether you can go to jail for blogging or Tweeting something because you're not a journalist and therefore not entitled to the protection of the law (that protection including huge fines) or not is still totally up in the air. Let alone where a journalist that blogs something stands.

Up until now, the party line has been that regulations will 'clarify' the law. But we haven't yet seen how clear the law, in its final form, truly is. Let's hope that one of tomorrow's papers gets to publish the full draft as approved by the FNC so we can see how the world has moved on since the UAE Journalists' Association published its voluntary Code of Ethics in October 2007...

** As has been noted on this blog before, 'post in haste, repent at leisure'.

Indeed, the new 'law' news from WAM is, as the (sadly) anonymous commenter on this post quite rightly pointed out, not really news. The President has not, as far as we know, signed it off. And so it's not a law. It's just the same old document (unseen) that we've all been waiting for along with some more comments on how it's going to be a wonderful law that we're all going to really enjoy living with. I'm going to hold on getting a red face over this until we see tomorrow's coverage from UAE media. This'll be interesting...

The Man Who Wasn't There

"A source said that Russian TV reported yesterday that Dubai Police had arrested Madov's killer."

So reports Gulf News today, a statement that, for me, shows neatly how reporting of the Jumeirah Beach Residence shooting has descended into something of a fiasco.

I'd quote yesterday's Reuters file that claimed the man wasn't dead, but it's been updated now - one danger of t'Internet being that when someone goofs, even someone as trusted and respected as Reuters, they can correct it instantly. Reuters now has a file stating that the dead man is Chechen army officer Sulim Yamadayev and another saying that the Russian Consul has confirmed his identity but hasn't seen a passport.

Gulf News yesterday reported that the dead man was called Sulaiman Madov. And today's front page story (the source of that marvellous quote above) continues in that assertion, based on the discovery of Madov's passport on the body by Dubai police. However, GN illustrates its story with pictures of Yamadayev and does refer to 'some media reports' that have identified the man as Yamadayev.

You can tell that GN is caught between a rock and a hard place, having to go with the 'official' identity Madov while (I guess) firmly believing the widespread media reports that Madov was actually Yamadayev. It must have been frustrating for their journalists.

KT's report, meanwhile, says that a Dubai Police spokesperson had confirmed there had 'been an error' about the Madov identity - KT goes with Yamadayev and includes some good background, including a game attempt to get the Austrian embassy to confirm that Yamadayev had been on a Chechen exiles 'death list' that the Austrian government had previously talked about.

The National, which was always firmly in the Yamadayev camp, was able today to feature a good background piece on Yamadayev. The strength of the journalism here is quite apparent - free to go with its own sources and tie together the different streams of information (embassies, wire reports, eye witnesses and so on), The National made up its own mind about the identity of the man and had more time to play with, which meant that it was able to focus on the 'back story' and produce a stronger and more emphatic piece today that focused not only on the facts of the killing, but the complex and often violent background to it.

I'm left with the feeling that yesterday was a race against the clock to try and find out what on earth was happening, a day of speculation and guesswork, intransigent 'official' sources and frustration. It must have been frenetic. But I do think The National came out on top because of its journalism and its ability to practice that journalism without worrying about contradicting an official source and having to wait until the 'error' was made official.

With the recent news that government ministries will have an 'official spokesperson', there is room for some doubt whether that will remain the case in the future.

One can only hope that it will.