Communicate

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The Times has worked long and hard to cultivate a certain image around the world. “Respected,” “quality” and “authoritative” are all common descriptions of a newspaper that has been around since 1788 and is viewed in Britain as a staid, serious daily. “Edgy” and “shocking” certainly wouldn’t be the first – or even the eighty-first – words that subscribers associate with the title.
 
That may have changed on May 21, when Saudi-owned SAB Media started printing an international edition of the paper in Dubai. Whether by accident or design, The Times is already pushing the boundaries of what’s allowed in the Middle East. When Tariq Qureishy, chief executive office of SAB Media, first spoke to Communicate about the paper, he said the version printed in Dubai would be “the international version, modified for this region.” Although editorial control rests with The Times’ team in London, Qureishy was certain the paper would respect regional “cultural sensibilities.” Anything deemed too controversial for the Middle East would be replaced in the local edition, he suggested, making it different from the international edition sold in, say, Paris or Toyko. Odd, then, that George Brock, Saturday editor of The Times, was adamant that there will be no editorial compromise in the paper when he spoke at a May 28 media roundtable hosted in Dubai by Times owner News International and SAB Media. The edition printed in Dubai will be identical to the international edition that appears elsewhere in the world, he said. Right out of the starting gate, the problem was plain for all to see. In the May 27 edition of the Sunday Times international edition – the first Sunday edition to be printed in Dubai – the Culture supplement was missing from shelves in the UAE. It contained a retrospective of the late photographer Herb Ritts’s work, much of which can be categorized either as “glamour” photography or soft porn, depending whether it’s on an art gallery wall or clutched in the hand. Qureishy confirms that the supplement was pulled for this reason. One of Ritts’s photos did slip through, however. On the cover. The first edition of the Sunday Times to be printed in Dubai sported a young lady’s bare backside on its front page. Qureishy had told Arabian Business magazine that “scantily-clad women will not appear” in the paper. If naked female buttocks don't qualify, one wonders what does. Qureishy says this was a mistake that won’t happen again, and insists that since the paper was still in its “soft launch” phase -- despite the fact that all press releases named May 21 as the launch date -- the error shouldn’t cause any problems. The fact remains, though, that we bought our copy off the shelf at a Dubai supermarket, bare ass and all (the paper, not us). The edition clearly breached local censorship rules, and our picture of the cover will be censored despite the fact that it has already been published in Dubai. Since the “bare bum” cover, The Times has continued to feature content that might be expected to stir up controversy here: A piece by Christopher Hitchens a few days later was trailed by a front-page banner asking “Is religion a poison?” In the piece, Hitchens says of Islamic fundamentalists, “I regard these people as deadly enemies and I want them to know that I hate them much more than they hate me.” It’s a reasonable statement, but reason doesn’t often come into consideration when local media reacts to a story. Take the furor over Conde Nast chairman Jonathan Newhouse’s comment that his company wouldn’t grant a UAE-based company a license to print an Arabic-language version of Vogue because “within the Muslim world, there is … a powerful fundamentalist, religious element which rejects … freedom of expression, equality for women and expression of sexuality, to name three values associated with our publication. … Our company has no wish to impose its values on a society which does not fully share them. And we do not wish to provoke a strongly negative, even violent reaction. It isn’t even worth it for a few million in licensing fees.” The Emirates Today reaction? A cover headline reading “Vogue chairman says ‘No’ to Muslims.” A week or after the Hitchens piece, The Times ran a double page spread about wine, accompanied by a photo of a large glass of red liquid. It could have been grape juice, but given the context, we’re guessing it was wine. With alcohol in it. Depictions of alcohol are a murky area, as Communicate has reported (see “Hard drink, soft sell,”). A couple of years ago, the Times spread might not have been a big deal. But there’s clearly been a roll-back in terms of censorship in the UAE since then. In this year’s Time Out Dubai Eating Out Guide, for instance, the pages of the wine section have been torn out of copies for sale in bookshops, despite the fact that there’s a wine section listed on the contents page. (And a wine section appeared in previous years’ versions of the book.) ITP, the guide’s publisher, refuses to comment on whether this was the result of an internal decision or a ruling from the authorities. It’s likely that The Times’ editorial team in London didn’t even give their wine feature a second thought. ITP clearly did. We point all this out not to complain that The Times is “getting away with it,” but because it seems to suggest that local “cultural sensitivities” aren't quite as easy to offend as conventional wisdom would have it. If local media doesn’t decide to stir up imaginary controversy over what’s been printed in other papers, but instead gets on with reporting actual news, we might discover the populace doesn’t actually get all that worked up over words, pictures and opinions. The Times roundtable touched on recent discussion in Dubai’s media world about the location of “the line” – and what happens if you cross it. As one local journo puts it: “A couple of years ago, the message from authorities to reporters was, ‘Be fearless.’ That message has now changed to, ‘Be responsible.’” The general consensus in the room was that local journalists feel restricted by official censorship, self-censorship by publishers or printers, and the threat of bureaucratic hassle should they overstep a vague and ever-shifting mark. The Times could be leading the way to easing those concerns and guiding the UAE’s media towards the kind of high-quality, unrestricted journalism that is necessary if the country’s media is to achieve international credibility. In the meantime, though, it might want to cover its ass.

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