Go down and read story number IX - yuk! Good luck in the swim…
http://www.independent.co.uk/voices/commentators/johann-hari/the-dark-side-of-dubai-1664368.html
Sorry slightly off topic.
Not that I am here to defend Dubai or anything like that (see my comment at the end of this post) but I do have a problem with sensationalist journalists who seek to stretch the truth in order to make a good story and who are prepared to tell lies to sell the view they want to present. Such journalists think (I stand to be corrected but the author of this particular article may even have actually expressly even said as much) that it is worth telling a few lies for the greater good of highlighting an issue or what they think is a problem. The author himself has admitted that he didn’t always quote his interviewees correctly and instead put down what he thought the point was they were trying to make.My problem with this is that as a journalists you must present the facts and not adjust or interpret them just to tell the story you think needs to be told.
The author of the piece Johann Hari has been pretty much discredited as a journalist due to this type of fabrication and exaggeration and this is well documented:-
http://www.economist.com/...unethical-journalism
http://www.theguardian.com/...uits-the-independent
http://www.dailymaverick.co.za/...nalism/#.VqRfZ9EgrIU
I live in the UAE myself and there were a few things that didn’t seem right about the article to me but it would take me a long time to articulate them all. For a balanced response piece that deals with most of the issues as well as a discussion on Johann’s misdemeanours see below:-
http://dubaithoughts.blogspot.ae/...nn-hari-exposed.html
http://dubaithoughts.blogspot.ae/...on-dubai-so-far.html
In summary yes there are problems and issues here but not as many or as bad as the original article would have you believe. Articles that fabricate and sensationalise the issues only serve to hinder the discussion and make change more difficult.