Dubai: The former editor-at-Large of Doha News, Qatar’s most popular news website, has accused Qatar of silencing journalists at home while preaching freedom of press to the international community.
“This week, Qatar’s Emir told CBS that his country ‘wanted freedom of speech for the people of the region’,” Victoria Scott posted on the internet.
“Shaikh Tamim made the statement in defiance of demands from neighbouring nations that he should close the Qatar-funded news outlet Al Jazeera. But while Qatar is busy patting itself on the back for bringing independent, Arab-led global news to the world, it is also busy suppressing similar voices at home,” she said.
Scott on Thursday said that she was treating Shaikh Tamim’s enthusiastic defence of free speech with immense scepticism.
“It is not enough to insist that journalists in your employ should be allowed to report freely abroad. No, if you are to avoid hypocrisy, you must also allow journalists in your own country to question, to probe and to analyse without fear,” she said.
Founded in 2009 by two American journalists, Omar Chatriwala and Shabina Khatri, Doha News stood up for truth, honesty and debate against a backdrop of the press release journalism published by local newspapers, Scott added.
“Doha News (DN) continued to stand for these principles even after Qatar’s government decided to block access to the site without warning last December. And even then, despite having to shed most of its staff and move operations overseas, DN continued to publish well-researched, well-sourced, honest stories about Qatar. And although DN no longer operated in Qatar and was therefore not beholden to local regulations, Qatar’s government persisted with its censorship of the site. Sadly, the loss of traffic hurt advertising sales, and eventually Doha News’ founders could no longer continue to support it financially.”
In the hope of keeping the site alive instead of just shutting it down, it was sold last month to Star Reputation Consulting Ltd. The online media company from India said its goal is to promote “free and unbiased journalism.”
“Initially, the plan was to retain the editorial team during a transitional period. However, we decided to walk away after the company expressed a desire to enforce its own — undisclosed — editorial values on existing staff. Since the sale, Doha News has published only a handful of articles, and sent out only a few tweets. The new owners do not appear to have hired new journalists, and for now at least, the future of the site seems bleak,” Scott said.
“This is incredibly depressing, not only for the owners and staff of Doha News, who have worked tirelessly and at times at great personal risk for the cause of free media in Qatar, but also for Qatar’s residents. They now have only a steady diet of propaganda, advertising and rumour with which to discern what is actually going on in the country they live in.”
Scott said that before the sale, Doha News was an integral part of hundreds of thousands of people’s daily lives.
She added: “A while ago, I was at a media function, and I got talking to a journalist who worked at one of Qatar’s major newspapers. A talented reporter, he approached me earnestly with a list of stories he had wanted to investigate, but had been told by his paper’s editors that he could not. He desperately wanted to publish the truth as he saw it, but he was denied that chance. In refusing to allow residents of Qatar to read Doha News, Qatar will now only have this sort of media: the media it deserves. Doha News’ critics, small in number but very vocal, will get what they have wanted all along. A benign, malleable media, publishing advertorial rather than informative and useful news.”
