About the MSI
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IREX designed the MSI to measure the strength and viability of any country’s media sector. The MSI considers all the factors that contribute to a media system—the quality of journalism, effectiveness of management, the legal environment supporting freedom of the press, and more—to arrive at scores on a scale ranging between 0 and 4. These scores represent the strength of the media sector components and can be analyzed over time to chart progress (or regression) within a country. Additionally, countries or regions may be compared to one another. IREX currently conducts the MSI in 80 countries, and produced the first Middle East and North Africa MSI in 2005.
MSI Overview [9] | Africa [10] | Asia [11] | Europe & Eurasia [12] | Middle East & North Africa [13]
MSI Methodology [14]
Download the Complete United Arab Emirates MSI Chapter (PDF): 2009 [15] | 2008 [16] | 2006/7 [17] | 2005 [18]
MSI United Arab Emirates - 2009 Introduction
Overall Country Score: 2.30
Many consider the United Arab Emirates (UAE) the center of media activity for the Persian Gulf state, servicing the powerful medai demand throughout the region. The UAE has about a dozen daily newspapers, including several in English, each with circulations in the tens of thousands, and nearly twice that number of radio and television stations. UAE has more Internet users per capita than any other country in the Gulf region, and these users tap into a plethora of electronic media. However, media outlets have been privatized only recently, and they maintain close ties to the authorities.
In 2000, the government created the Dubai Media City (DMC) free zone on the outskirts of the city. Organizations working within this zone include domestic and international press organizations that generally are not subject to UAE media laws. Numerous news and media outlets—including Reuters, Microsoft, and Middle East Business News—have moved their Gulf operations to DMC. Nevertheless, publication of UAE newspapers, electronic media, and other works often occur outside the zone, and are thus subject to a 1980 law that restricts media freedom tightly.
On numerous occasions, the government has used UAE's existing media law to penalize, fine, and close media establishments that have expressed criticism of the government. On January 20, UAE's legislature, the Federal National Council, passed the draft media law drawn up by the National Media Council (NMC). As of the end of 2009, the law still awaited the signature of President Shaikh Khalifa Bin Zayed Al Nahyan. The MSI panelists said that the pending law promises significant improvement over the existing law in some areas, but there are many other areas of concern, including content-based restrictions on speech adn onerous governmental controls on licensing, registration, operation, and maangement of the media. The law threatens to apply more regulation to the DMC free zone as well.
In addition, the panelists criticized the state's extreme forms of governmental censorship and self-censorship, whenever journalists cover topics such as politics, culture, religion, friendly foreign governments, or any issue that the government deems politically or culturally sensitive. Another problem is the government's strict filtering system that targets websites with content on dissenting political opinions, criticisms of society, religious freedom, or human rights.