Dubai’s global reporting meltdown.

A worker at Dubai’s supposedly non-existent dhow wharves, where they load their apparently non-existent dhows for seemingly non-existent trips across the Gulf and beyond.

As you’ve no doubt heard, there’s a global financial meltdown at the moment and Dubai’s not missing out. Why should it? The property bubble has burst in Dubai? That’s no surprise – it was overvalued by at least 50%. If you bought there when it was overhyped, you clearly were not a friend of mine nor had any investment savvy.

But if you believe what you read in the press, Dubai has become Icarus, the economy who flew too close to the sun. In just one week The New York Times, The Guardian and The Sydney Morning Herald have had bad, bad, things to say about this uppity Arab state, which they clearly think reached far above its station, luring people to its mirage-like, shifting sand islands of forty thieves, tricking good folk out of their money, and ‘forcing’ poor people to move to another country for a better, if temporary, life.

All these papers have demonstrated is how easy it is to get facts wrong, yet again, about Dubai. Like Dubai or loathe it, facts are important. But there seems to be an element of glee in their reporting about Dubai suffering like everyone else. Tall poppy syndrome? Jealousy? A hint of racism? Maybe all three. Whatever it is, it’s still irresponsible reporting.

Let’s start with the continually troubled New York Times. Surely this reliable journal of record would tell it like it is? After all, its reputation is constantly under scrutiny. Well… the writer states:

But Dubai, unlike Abu Dhabi or nearby Qatar and Saudi Arabia, does not have its own oil, and had built its reputation on real estate, finance and tourism.

Wrong, wrong, and wrong. Dubai was always a trading post. Trade built the basic economy, oil fuelled the development of Dubai in the late 1960s, and savvy investment built an infrastructure that fuelled more trade, finance, tourism and, most recently, real estate. See the difference? Foreigners couldn’t even buy real estate in Dubai until a few years ago. And oil played a major part in creating Dubai’s infrastructure. But apparently Dubai was a mirage of sorts for the writer for the New York Times, who should know better, given his reputation and experience.

There are several other factual or disputable pieces of information in that story, for instance, quoting other newspapers without verifying the facts. But it’s like shooting fish in a barrel finding mistakes in that beat-up.

But clearly someone who read the New York Times story is Rick Feneley, reporting for the Sydney Morning Herald about an Australian managing director who is being held for fraud in Dubai. He writes:

Along with thousands of redundancies, local police reported at least 3000 cars abandoned outside Dubai International Airport in the four months to January. Many had keys in the ignition. It seems debt-ridden and jobless foreigners are fleeing Dubai.

This false claim, which also appeared in the New York Times, has spread like wildfire around the Internet. It was initially based on an Arabic press story, reported on in a story from the Times of London. The local police didn’t report anything of the kind, rather the local police chief had to eventually respond to the claim and correct it. It’s incredibly sloppy reporting and typically lazy journalism to keep repeating something that has been proven false. Regardless of the number of cars left at the airport, the police chief never reported 3,000 cars being abandoned – he puts it at 11! But that little fact spoils a good story of ‘panic on the streets’.

But Feneley goes on:

Unlike the other emirates, Dubai has little oil to speak of. It has only its real estate, built on the whims of its rich and its rulers. Only on this can it guarantee its future as a global financial hub.

There are seven emirates (city-states) in the country that is the United Arab Emirates. One of those emirates, Dubai, posts the second highest amount of oil revenue (at 3% of its GDP) behind Abu Dhabi emirate (also the country’s capital), which has 94% of the reserves of the entire country. As you can see, the other emirates don’t have much at all. Dubai only has real estate? Let’s look at what percentage real estate comprises of Dubai’s GDP. The latest figures I can find put real estate at 15% of Dubai’s GDP – so I guess if you’re pinning all of Dubai’s future on something that only contributes 15% of GDP and is ‘built on a whim’, I guess you could conflate that to a serious problem. Which, it appears, is what the author is trying to do.

Meanwhile, the perpetually embarrassing Aussie expat Germaine Greer continues to sully her reputation by deciding to do an ‘architectural tour’ of Dubai by sunning herself atop a London Double-Decker bus on a trip to the city. You know, we’ve always played down the whole bus tour of Dubai when we’ve written about the place because, for one, it’s not a great way to see Dubai. Two, it’s a little colonialist. Three, it’s not our preferred way to get your head around a city that requires more than being awe-struck by a crane atop a building site.

Greer, who devoted an unspecified amount of time to a stopover in the city, deconstructs Dubai’s architecture without seemingly visiting any areas that have any architectural work of merit – apart from passing the Burj al Arab in a bus and pontificating about it, including the interior which she doesn’t state that she even saw. Greer considers the Burj Dubai a ‘pretty conservative building’, despite it being unfinished. It’s like critiquing New York’s architecture by getting your cousin to drive you through New Jersey (sorry, Mr Springsteen). But this is from someone who hasn’t been relevant since the 1971 paperback edition of The Female Eunuch.

Still, she goes on:

Burj Dubai was originally meant to be entirely residential; when I saw it, it was entirely empty.

Germaine, that’s probably related to the cranes that you mentioned in your story. The ones that are still at the top of the unfinished building. Do I need to point out that even in the ‘Third World’ of Dubai people generally wait for the building to be finished before moving in? And does anyone still edit stories at The Guardian? Or are they too scared to touch Greer’s wonderful prose?

Australia’s unhinged cultural warrior, sadly, and forlornly, continues:

The only dhows on Dubai Creek these days take tourists on one-hour pleasure cruises.

Oh dear. Completely wrong. Do I really need to cite? Do I need to count the ways? Call me, Germaine, and I’ll hook you up. But perhaps, dear reader, you’d prefer to believe a contestant of the 2005 series of Celebrity Big Brother UK than someone who has spent countless hours photographing the workers and sailors at Dubai’s supposedly non-existent dhow wharves, loading their apparently non-existent dhows for seemingly non-existent trips across the Gulf and beyond.

Hint for the casual reader: I’ve never been on Celebrity Big Brother UK.

But now to The Guardian. Again. The journalist assigned to narrate this video, Paul Lewis, states that foreign workers left home for a ‘yearly salary that won’t buy you a meal in many of Dubai’s restaurants’ and are now being sent back home. Who would have thought that temporary workers would be sent home when that temporary work dried up? Call me a heartless bastard, but that’s the way the global economy works these days. Fair? No. The author claims that the workers he’s writing about earn a paltry £25 a week – not a good enough wage in any economy – but regardless, that makes the meal he’s talking about top out at Dh6,854.

That is US$1,866 for a meal! For one.

So Paul, any chance I can piggyback a banquet with you on your expense account? I’m happy to fill in the massive blanks on your knowledge of Dubai while I fill my stomach and drink some really good wines. Lets talk.