By Mobin Pandit
Newspapers in Qatar are so full of press releases that if they don’t carry news from around the world sent by international wire agencies whose services they subscribe to, they can easily pass off as in-house journals of some corporate entities, official mouthpieces of the government, or at best, a medium for advertising agencies.
Their local pages carry anything but local news. The pages are mostly filled with publicity materials called ‘press’ releases by the corporate world, institutions like schools and universities, and government ministries and agencies.
These so-called press handouts actually look for free publicity. Most releases are badly written and if some are newsworthy — which is rare — the news is buried inside.
Some releases are hilarious due to their contents — a company official returning from an overseas trip with no details, or a school distributing hall tickets to students for examinations — while others can make one swirl with laughter with funny construction of sentences.
Some institutions consider themselves as holy cow and their often arrogant officials insist that their press handouts be published without any alterations or editing.
Corporate releases seldom have anything concrete to say and their whole purpose is to gain cheap and free publicity.
They are written by fat-salaried professionals working for international public relations agencies — many of which have set up operations in Doha looking to milk the local corporate houses flush with funds.
These professionals are mostly former media persons who have deserted news organisations for money and hassle-free day jobs or fresh journalism graduates.
They have actually made the job of journalists easy as they send ready-to-use materials that are mostly put by the reporter in his newspaper without making any changes or bothering to give them a newsy turn.
Bigger companies and government departments have their own public relations departments that are quite bureaucratic and issue releases only when they need some publicity.
One example of how the PR departments of companies and state agencies function is that recently, when there was a fire near Souq Waqif and news reporters and photographers descended on the scene, a PR man claiming to represent the developers of the high-profile project asked them to go back saying a press statement with photographs would soon be sent to their newspapers.
“Does this happen anywhere?” wondered a scribe who has covered many such accidents in his long career.
Press releases arrive at the newspapers daily through emails literally in piles, especially on Sundays through Wednesdays, for no one wants a release published on Fridays and Saturdays, holidays in the week when it is generally believed that a paper’s circulation is low.
Rough estimates suggest that a newspaper receives around 150 press releases on average on a working day.
In any country with a relatively free press, the ratio of the releases that are used shouldn’t be more than two or three percent. “Back home, we didn’t get more than a few releases a month and, obviously, we value the releases sent by the police or such state departments due to their news value,” said another senior journalist.
There are companies and agencies that send press releases to newspapers through their advertising departments to make sure they are published. And there are journalists who even collect advertisements for their organisation from the very companies they cover and collect commissions.
Then, there are reporters who become close to some PR agencies and use their releases in their newspapers regularly, thus building a rapport to collect gifts and enjoy free overseas trips.
Some stoop to such levels that they ask the PR people to send invitations to their newspapers for junkets in their names. Some scribes even work part-time with various government ministries and agencies writing their press handouts.
It is common for some reporters to use stories with the photographs of the same official or officials over and over, not to cultivate them as sources, but to please them for reasons not difficult to fathom, according to sources.
The most boring and hilarious releases often come from private schools. South Asian schools are worse when it comes to seeking cheap publicity through the newspapers.
Newspapers elsewhere in the world, except perhaps the GCC, call these releases plugs and use them sparingly, that too, after drastic cuts and laborious rewriting — a boring yet challenging work for which dedicated professionals are hired.
Press briefings and events like launches and conferences are held here literally at the drop of a hat and their coverage takes care of whatever little space is left in a newspaper’s local section.
Consider this: A reporter from a local daily said he recently went to a highly prestigious educational foundation with a photographer colleague at the invitation of its PR agency to cover an event.
He said he was boiling with anger when he realized the futility of the event for which he had to get up quite early in the morning. “The event turned out to be a workshop for some of the employees of that organisation on English-to-Arabic translation and vice versa, so there was nothing to report.”
“When I asked the PR lady what we were supposed to do, she simply said just take photographs and write about whatever is going on,” said the reporter.
Reporters say they reach news conference venues invited by PR agencies driving long distances and many a time they are told the briefing has been cancelled or put off. “The agencies don’t even bother to call and inform us,” said a reporter.
Then, there are meetings and conferences where journalists are invited for coverage but they are told at the venues that the events are not open to the media. “That too happens frequently,” the reporter added.
At a news briefing, if a reporter asks a question that a company official finds uneasy, he is told the event is not to discuss that issue. “Our experience suggests that press conferences in Qatar are held just to gain publicity. If a company signs an agreement however unimportant, it would convene a press meet,” said a senior reporter.
Evading uneasy questions at press briefings is not common to companies alone. Many key government ministries and agencies resort to such tactics.
Here is an example: the Ministry of Labour recently held a press conference to announce that a few new countries were added to the list from where Qatari manpower agencies could source housemaids.
Journalists were surprised when the two officials addressing the conference evaded questions and said they were there only to announce the new countries. This infuriated at least one reporter who politely said: “You should instead have sent a release”.
The most shameful thing of all, according to critics, is the charitable organisations sending out press handouts on a regular basis and frequently holding news conferences to announce the help they provide to the poor at home or abroad.
Such releases and press meets become a common feature, especially during Ramadan, the holy month of the Islamic calendar. “What is shocking about such announcements is that Islam bars people from making public their acts of charity,” said one critic.
He reminded that according to Islam so forbidden is talking (or boasting) about one’s charitable act that if the right hand is giving alms to the poor, the left should not know.
“But come Ramadan and you see the charitable bodies literally competing with one another in making such announcements. There are some that even announce the amounts they have spent on holding mass evening feasts (iftars) during the fasting month,” said the critic.
Hardcore journalists say they remember only one press conference in recent memory which made them look forward to -- when the Interior Ministry held one on the day of the Villaggio Mall fire on May 28, 2012 to give details of the casualties.
One way to ensure that the handouts distributed at the so-called news briefings are published is to give away expensive gifts like pens, wrist watches and even mobile handsets to reporters. Gift vouchers were in vogue earlier and a famous bank at least gave away vouchers for huge amounts to reporters some seven to eight years ago.
Companies and banks alone are not known for giving away gifts to journalists. The list even includes some government ministries and agencies.
Sports journalists are described by critics as worse when it comes to accepting gifts, including cash. It is said that at the end of a sporting season or a series of some sporting events cash is distributed to them and the result is nothing analytical (forget critical!) ever appears about local sports clubs or events in the sports pages of English-language newspapers. Arabic newspapers do sometimes carry analytical sports stories.
Local sports stories in the English print media, thus, always paint a rosy picture of clubs and events held locally and nothing is reported that goes on off the field in any club or game. Sometimes players and coaches and even organisers have complaints that are shamelessly ignored by the media.
A critic said he has never seen anything analytical in the local English-language newspapers about local sports — any sport for that matter, even handball or gymnastics.
“You mean to say everything is ideal, quiet and peaceful in the sporting world here,” he wondered. When on offer are huge cash dole-outs, expensive gifts and frequent and paid junkets to dream destinations around the world, why should a sports journalist risk being sidelined and analytical, he asks.
“The fault doesn’t lie with the journalists. It lies with the system,” said the critic.
Business journalists aren’t saints either and cannot even in their wildest of dreams imagine writing anything analytical about the oil and gas sector, or the big Qatari banks or even the bigger business entities including airlines.
They don’t even make a mention when the profits of an important listed company take a beating. The local newspapers have almost unanimously underplayed the story about the listed companies reporting less net profits in 2012 over the previous year. Gifts, cash and junkets are a common feature of business journalism as well, but the situation isn’t as bad as in sports journalism, say critics.
A journalistic culture where press releases, unwanted briefings, academic lectures and launches are taking precedence over news is emerging in the country and it is turning journalists timid, lazy and corrupt.
The result is that newspapers seldom carry hardcore, critical and analytical stories that people want to read. Journalists make no effort at all to attempt analytical stories.
All they do is praise people, businessmen and officials. That serves the newspapers better because they find it easier to attract advertisements.
Reporters benefit, too, as they don’t have to work hard and write controversial stories and instead get expensive gifts and enjoy paid trips overseas.
“Qatar’s newspaper industry is busy pleasing people by lavishing praises, whereas they should be a mirror to the society and government. Their job is to point out errors and irregularities and not lavish praises,” said a media analyst not wanting his name in print due to the sensitivity of the issue.
Investigative reporting is unheard of in the country and the blame goes, again, to journalists whose job is to dig out information and report what is wrong, but not a single investigative report has ever appeared in recent memory in any newspaper here.
Journalists have become lazy and are concerned about their survival and that explains why they have become dependent on press releases, news conferences, launches and boring lectures to fill the local pages of their newspapers.
At the same time, journalists complain of a lack of access to information so they could do stories that are hardcore, informative and reader-friendly. Critics say that while that is true, there nevertheless are ways to confront those challenges and at least attempt doing bold stories.
“One must at least make an attempt. Information is not always difficult to come by. You must cultivate sources and sometimes they do help,” said a media critic.
Investigative journalism in Qatar, according to some scribes, is out of question because of the culture of secrecy.
But much of the malaise that plagues the profession of print journalism here can be attributed to the fact that a vast majority of journalists are expatriates.
Although many of them are trained professionals with previous newspaper experience, their major concern always is to play safe and not undermine their stay here. Their focus is on survival and savings for their future financial security.
Locals hardly have any respect for expatriate journalists, especially as most of them come from Asian and Arab countries that also send large numbers of low-income workers.
“We are treated here like any other expatriate employee,” said a senior expatriate journalist.
The local newspaper industry is not known for paying attractive wages and that dissuades citizens from taking up jobs as most fresh Qatari journalism graduates prefer public and media relations jobs in the government sector where pay and perks are lucrative.
The situation being this, it is not surprising that media freedom is a casualty in Qatar, say critics. According to them, one cannot expect expatriate journalists to bring about the desired changes, for they cannot be bold and critical. “If nothing, an expatriate journalist writing critically can be fired by his boss. So he is a weak link in the entire cycle,” said a critic.
The only people, according to critics, who can fight for press freedom are the locals and they are conspicuous by their absence in a field that promises low pay and hard work coupled with high risks.
“You cannot expect reporting to improve and the local newspaper industry to become bold and news-oriented if you don’t encourage citizens to enter,” said the critic.
Critics say they hope the present culture of gifts and some journalists soliciting advertisements from the businesses they cover would end once the new media law is implemented.
The draft of the proposed law suggests that journalists should not be permitted to accept gifts and solicit advertisements as that compromises their professional integrity and weakens their ability to do objective reporting.
The Peninsula
