Thursday, January 15, 2009

What the…?!

I was alerted to a rather worrying article this week (thank you to The Marple Leaf and PopBitch) in Gulf News – an English daily newspaper. The article is here and is a bit of a shocker. I actually think you can go to prison in Germany for having deranged opinions such as this.

You may or may not know that news here in the UAE is heavily censored and government controlled. I work with an ex-news journo from the aforementioned publication, and she has regaled me with tales of stories written and filed which either questioned the government, or contentious subjects covered that never made it to print. Apparently there would be a single phone call instructing them not to include a story – and that was it. Gone.

So I won’t go on too much about my opinions on the above piece (you may think this ridiculous but there was one blog here that has been banned by the government for being critical of Dubai – my UK readers will be able to see it here) as I don’t want my blog switched off.

But really. How on earth is printing this story considered acceptable?

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