7Days, seventh hell

The rumours continue to fly over popular free UAE tabloid 7Days: is it going to be shut down? Has it disappeared for good?

7Days has had a chequered past. It began life as arguably the worst, most puerile and ill-written weekly newspaper the world has ever witnessed.

Then it went (six) daily, and by some miracle, was transformed into a decent and amusing little rag. Its letters page became a phenomenon: a kind of literary qahwa-house for gossip, mudslinging and general exchanges between expats, locals and a host of amusing fake-letter writing trolls. Who can forget "Maria Metcalf" and the labourers disturbing her Jumeirah coffee mornings? Or Penny Francis and her homophobic Ladies' Circle?

Things progressed, culminating in the purchase of a 60% stake in 7Days by UK-based Associated Newspapers, publisher of the Daily Mail and Metro.

Then suddenly, something went very, horribly wrong. 7Days had withstood many buffetings and high winds over the course of time, but never such a storm as this. The trigger? Bizarrely, a supposedly light-hearted, international feature about women's assertiveness training in Russia, unfortunately titled "Bitch school". For some reason this was a huge insult to local culture. That article has since been deleted from their site, but the same story can be found in this Telegraph article. Fairly innocuous one would think.

The next bizarre furore was over an interview with UAE President Khalifa, reprinted from WAM and AFP copy. To the average expat, it was a positive, serious article and an important and useful opportunity to read a translation of his Highness's words, given the original article was printed in Arabic in a London newspaper. But to the Arab press, 7Days had committed some kind of earthshattering outrage where Khalifa misquoted and utterly insulted. That article stayed up for longer, but has now been deleted, its Google cache can be seen here.

Three Arab papers - two of which are owned by rival Dubai government-owned media group AMG - raged against 7Days in their editorials and called for an advertiser boycott of 7Days. 7Days, which had apologised profusely and even fired someone over the Russian article, was absolutely bewildered, as were most of its readers, and it is interesting to note that it has not been forced to print an apology for the article.

Then 7Days starts disappearing. It has allegedly been banned from Emaar properties. Various advertisers pull out. The distributor quits. Rumours fly that it has been shut down. Conspiracy theories abound. According to the latest sources, 7Days has found a new distributor, and deliveries are returning to normal.

The question remains: why? Why is there suddenly an orchestrated campaign to shut down a newspaper that could have easily been closed over numerous, far more obviously controversial articles at many times in its history?

Could it be that someone has finally realised the significance of having an independent newspaper in the UAE owned by a very powerful international group? If so, they need to think a bit further about how that powerful group might react if its new acquisition is crushed and killed.