The National refuses to advertise Doha Debates 14, January 2010
Posted by thegulfblog.com in The Emirates.Tags: Abu Dhabi, Burj Dubai renaming, Burj Khalifah, Doha Debates, Dubai, Is Dubai a bad idea, The National
trackback
The Abu Dhabi based newspaper The National has refused to advertise a recent episode of the Qatar based Doha Debates. The motion debated in the show was ‘Is Dubai a bad idea?’ The key irony here is, of course, that the audience voted strongly (62%) that Dubai was not a bad idea, showing considerable regional support. Yet, in the wake of Dubai’s humiliation of having their towering, crowning glory the Burj Dubai forcibly renamed the Burj Khalifah, they presumably did not want to have the appearance of gloating or further angering intra-Emirate feelings.
The Gulf blog 
[…] is the standard of Middle Eastern journalism fairly abysmal [as I've argued here, here, here and here] but given the youth bulge in many Middle Eastern societies not to mention the generally closed-off […]