All it took was a report comparing price rises in the United Arab Emirates (uae) with cheaper petrol available in neighbouring Oman. Almost immediately the article in Al Roeya was removed from the newspaper’s website. Its owner, a brother of the uae’s president, sacked the editor and dozens of journalists. Within weeks the newspaper was closed down. “If you are working in a government institution you have to toe the institution’s line,” explained a uae government flack. Across the Arab world it is increasingly true that the only permissible news is good news.
This was not always so. For decades regimes in Egypt, Jordan and some Gulf states tolerated the existence of an independent press, albeit a hobbled one. Some rulers reckoned it provided a safety-valve and helped gauge public opinion. “We wrote about corrupt arms deals, local support for jihadists and the suppression…
