My account of being censored by The New Arab about an article on Syria
by Ian Sinclair
11 February 2017
In August 2016 I received an email from the Assistant Editor of The New Arab, an online newspaper focussed on the Middle East, inviting me to write an article about climate change and the Middle East.
Though I was busy, I responded saying I would try to write something in the coming months. Aware that Wikipedia says The New Arab was owned by an investment company created by the Emir of Qatar I asked about the freedom to write critical things, including making criticisms of the Qatari Government. The New Arab upholds “professional standards… you may criticize whomever you want as long as do so in a respectable manner based on facts and logical rationale”, I was assured.
Over the next few months I wrote a couple of articles for The New Arab – on climate change and the GCC and on the US dominance of the United Nations.
After pitching successfully to the Comment Editor at The New Arab, on 2 February 2017 I submitted an article that asked why the media was ignoring leaked US government documents about Syria. This was important to highlight, I argued, because the documents completely contradicted the dominant narrative about the West and Syria that is endlessly repeated in the media. My article was published on 7 February 2017, and in the next couple of days was retweeted hundreds of times, and got over 5,000 Facebook shares.
However, when I went to read the comments under my article on the morning of 9 February 2017 I found that the article had been removed from The New Arab website. I emailed the Comment Editor, asking what had happened and was directed to the CEO of The New Arab. The CEO told me he had removed my article from the website because he “found it to be contrary to our editorial line.” He continued: “I made the decision to remove it from the website because our values should not be undermined. I have no problem with publishing some differences of opinion on the Syrian issue, but I cannot allow something to be published that undermines the revolution that started against what is a bloody and tyrannical regime.”
Referring to my “opinion”, he noted “I do not believe that the Syrian revolution was in any way a Western construct or something that was encouraged/egged on by the West. Syrian people went out to claim their freedoms and were suppressed. This is the main issue at hand. How and when this conflict began turning into a proxy war etc does not detract from that point.”
The CEO ended by noting “I certainly don’t wish to censor anything. You can criticize whom you want. But the issue here was not criticism. It was an inference that I cannot accept given our stance.”
I replied to the CEO:
“Dear [CEO]
Thanks for your reply.
By removing my article for the farcical reasons you give below you have, regrettably, massively undermined the credibility of The New Arab and yourself.
Very obviously my article does not ‘undermine the revolution’ or argue the revolution was a ‘Western construct’. There is a plethora of evidence that Western governments and its allies in the region have supported the insurgency – including the US government sources I quoted in the article you have censored.
I would like to thank [the Comment Editor and Assistant Editor], both of whom have been a pleasure to work with.
Kind regards
Ian Sinclair”
My article can be read here.
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