Reporting on The National: setting new Gulf press standards

Dubai supermarkets still do their best to bury The National amid piles of property guides, but the superlative quality of this new newspaper owned by the Abu Dhabi Government can not be denied. It shows up rivals as inferior in their professional standards and frankly very amateur and erratic by comparison. The stage is surely set for a big shake-up.

Let us just flick through today’s edition and look at what The National is getting right. I see proper news standards being applied to stories with reporters following up in depth and quoting original sources rather than lifting press releases off AME Info.

Amazingly for a government paper the WAM story about President Khalifa heading to Saudi Arabia only makes the inside front page, and Prime Minister and Ruler of Dubai Sheikh Mohammed leaving on a state visit to France is not covered. This makes an inside spread on Emirates Business 24/7.

But The National sticks to hard news and avoids soft stories – presumably we will hear if Sheikh Mohammed signs a big deal – and at a time of year when the number of press invitations falls to a trickle, this is no mean feat.

The paper even upbraids the UAE for lack of transparency in its humanitarian aid which UN chief Sir John Holmes said was ‘highly dubious’ at 3.6 per cent of GDP, ‘vastly outweighing anything coming from Western countries’.

There is also an article attacking the Jumeirah Beach Residence in Dubai for only providing two out of seven promised gymnasiums for residents and building a car park for 500 vehicles on a beach park space. One would have to wonder if a Dubai based paper would dare to be so critical of a government project.

It is really a good read, and refreshingly open and transparent in its approach to stories. The commentary on the debate between presidential hopefuls Obama and McCain is highly relevant and its conclusions far less equivocal and ambiguous than Gulf News would dare to go.

You do have to wonder how President Barack Hussein Obama, son of a Muslim father is going to tackle the Middle East should he – as now seems almost inevitable – be in the White House next January. So why not discuss it openly?

I hear that The National is working its highly-paid hacks very hard, and that some have already returned to Dubai for a quieter life. However, the competition is getting as hot as the weather and it could be a case of out of the frying pan and into the fire.

Still it is no bad thing. If the Gulf is going to become a more open and transparent society then it needs TV stations like Al Jazeera and newspapers like The National, although the former could take a lesson from the latter and learn to be a little more critical of its paymaster.

But for any journalist around the world with a passing interest in the Middle East and a commitment to the job this is a great time to get involved. I would just book an air ticket and turn up in the office. There is nothing like getting your foot in the door!