Well, there's free press and then responsible journalism. I'm ALL FOR a free and open press, however, no matter where you are in the world, you need to adher to local tastes. Which doesn't mean censoring yourself or backing away from things that may prove uncomfortable: quite the contrary. It just means making sure when you do print something that's controverisal, you're doing it for a reason.

Tweeting about a ladies night and highlighting booze, when you KNOW that's a hot button issue in Qatar currently and you can easily (if stupidly-- see my above posts regarding renaming drinks) get around it? Dumb. You have to sometimes work within the system, and make sure all your facts are correct.

That said: if we're going to have ladies nights in Qatar (which we do) we should be able to talk about them! Ideally what should have happened post-twitter-gate wasn't the closure of the Pearl license, but a rethinking of silly rules about how we talk about things that are actually happening here.

Really glad I'm no longer over at that particular publication anymore tho! :P