I'll try and answer your question, because I didn't think when I was writing it that I was being all that clear.
"What I don't understand is why you say in one post that you don't think press freedom is of any importance in a little place like Doha, then you say you want to feel assured that safety standards are properly applied. That's exactly the sort of thing press freedom is for, along with exposing abuses of people's rights, overlooked hazards and anything else that should be rectified."
As DohaSteve points out, at some point when we all moved to Qatar, whether it was researching the place prior to arrival, or at some point after we settle in, we all come to realise that the media here isn’t free. It would be great if it was, sure, but we know that it isn’t.
We don’t need an NGO report to tell us that the press here is ‘not free’, because we don’t believe in our hearts that it is.
What is of concern is when the powers that be tell us, or lead us to believe, that the press is free, because then you move from a disingenuous situation where the government pretends it is free without acknowledging it as such, and into a territory where we are lied to. A lie about press freedom erodes the collective confidence of the citizenry about what other lies the government told.
Let’s look at a parallel situation. Let’s pretend that there was no quality control of the drinking water supplied to your house by the government. The government may say something like ‘we have no reason to believe that there are lethal contaminants in the supply of potable water’, which means that perhaps the water is deadly, but the government just isn’t acknowledging the existence of the risk. Imagine, though, the government saying ‘we have tested the water and it is 100% safe for consumption’. The second statement is a lie, and on hearing it you would rightfully have your doubts about the safety of anything else that the government claimed was 100% safe.
The freedom of the press, to me, isn’t all that important to me personally. I’m reasonably confident that newspapers are restricted regarding what they can publish and that there are all manner of human rights abuses occurring in the country that I would never expect to see in the paper. I would just be more comfortable living in a country that wasn’t lying about the situation, because you are left wondering what else they are lying about. I’d prefer a secretive government that sweeps things under the carpet than one that audaciously lies to the populous.
I'll try and answer your question, because I didn't think when I was writing it that I was being all that clear.
"What I don't understand is why you say in one post that you don't think press freedom is of any importance in a little place like Doha, then you say you want to feel assured that safety standards are properly applied. That's exactly the sort of thing press freedom is for, along with exposing abuses of people's rights, overlooked hazards and anything else that should be rectified."
As DohaSteve points out, at some point when we all moved to Qatar, whether it was researching the place prior to arrival, or at some point after we settle in, we all come to realise that the media here isn’t free. It would be great if it was, sure, but we know that it isn’t.
We don’t need an NGO report to tell us that the press here is ‘not free’, because we don’t believe in our hearts that it is.
What is of concern is when the powers that be tell us, or lead us to believe, that the press is free, because then you move from a disingenuous situation where the government pretends it is free without acknowledging it as such, and into a territory where we are lied to. A lie about press freedom erodes the collective confidence of the citizenry about what other lies the government told.
Let’s look at a parallel situation. Let’s pretend that there was no quality control of the drinking water supplied to your house by the government. The government may say something like ‘we have no reason to believe that there are lethal contaminants in the supply of potable water’, which means that perhaps the water is deadly, but the government just isn’t acknowledging the existence of the risk. Imagine, though, the government saying ‘we have tested the water and it is 100% safe for consumption’. The second statement is a lie, and on hearing it you would rightfully have your doubts about the safety of anything else that the government claimed was 100% safe.
The freedom of the press, to me, isn’t all that important to me personally. I’m reasonably confident that newspapers are restricted regarding what they can publish and that there are all manner of human rights abuses occurring in the country that I would never expect to see in the paper. I would just be more comfortable living in a country that wasn’t lying about the situation, because you are left wondering what else they are lying about. I’d prefer a secretive government that sweeps things under the carpet than one that audaciously lies to the populous.