Dubai is an oasis of relative calm as the storm clouds of war loom over the Middle East. It’s not as if the sheik that runs the place is oblivious to the threat of military conflicts. The impact of Israel’s revenge for Hamas’s savage attack is a top-of-the-mind issue for any country in this volatile region of the world. I visited the enclave before war broke out in Israel, though, and the command that had been issued by the Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum didn’t mention threats normally associated with Middle East politics. He was more concerned with cars. He’s ordered all on Dubai roads to be self-driving by the end of this decade.

If you think this mandate is hyperbole, think again. Established in the nineteenth century as a small fishing village surrounded by a mud wall, Dubai, under the seventy-four-year-old Sheikh’s firm hand, now boasts the tallest building in the world, a dazzling array of media and high-tech office towers, shopping malls housing world class aquariums and ice-skating rinks, and the second most five-star hotels anywhere. The city is now home to 3.6 million people, although 88.5 percent are immigrants or expats who come to Dubai to work. If the leader of a family that has ruled Dubai since 1833, orders something to happen here, it usually does.

I learned firsthand the power of the Sheik’s wishes as I zipped down a twelve-lane, modern highway with Alhurra cameraman Jack Daouen and reporter Bilal Al Fares in a roomy SUV past high rises that resemble New York City’s skyline rather than a patch of sand where goats and camels roamed not long ago. We’re on our way to a massive exhibit hall to film high tech companies from around the globe touting their wares to help comply with Sheik Maktoum’s directive that twenty-five percent of the cars on Dubai’s roads will be self-driving by 2030.

You can see how seriously vendors take his mandate upon entering the Dubai World Congress for Self-Driving Transport. All the usual suspects in the world of auto makers and technology gurus are there: Tesla, Peugeot, BMW, General Motors and more. Others heard the Sheik’s call, too, such as Swiss-Mile, a Zurich based robot maker run by a thirty-three-year-old refugee who fled Yugoslavia just before the civil war in 1990. The Chinese, both from Taiwan and the mainland, are there in force.

I didn’t initially accompany cameraman Daouen and reporter Al Fares to learn more about self-driving cars, although I found some of the exhibits employing cutting-edge artificial intelligence fascinating. I tagged along for the day to see how a cameraman and reporter for the Middle East Broadcasting Networks (MBN) work in a place where media censorship and a free press work like two ballerinas in a duet.

The MBN is an American government funded news company created to support balanced and objective reporting in the Middle East and North Africa, two areas of the world where government control of the media and an anti-U.S. bias are common. I chair the MBN board and decided to tour its offices to gain insights into the places in which we operate and how Alhurra, the MBN’s main broadcast news outlet, and its journalists rise to the challenges the markets pose. Dubai turned out to be the most opaque stop on my tour of the Middle East.

*Cameraman Jack Daouen and journalist Bilal Al Fares,* reporting for Alhurra. Photo by James O’Shea.

Censorship and government control of the media characterize all markets MBN serve to one degree or another. In some places, breaking the rules set by government media officials can lead to time in a jail cell or even a death sentence. Dubai and the UAE, the confederation of Arab enclaves in which the city is located, are a bit different, though. You can say practically anything you want about anybody as long as the subject doesn’t involve the Sheikhs that control the place.

The main centers of the UAE -- Dubai and Abu Dhabi, the capitol -- both invest heavily in the latest and best technology for media companies. As we drove towards the exhibit hall, Al Fares notes the signs and locales of the local media heavyweights -- CNN, Reuters and a slew of media brands controlled by governments such as Al Jazeera, controlled by Qatar, Al Arabiya (Saudi Arabia), Sky News Arabia (UAE), RT (Russia Today) Arabic; CGTV Arabic (China); and many more.

Many of the UAE-based stations regularly churn out less than flattering portraits of life in America, but even critics of the stations admire their sophistication and technological dexterity. Although he says he thinks Al Jazeera’s reporting is biased, Al Fares says the station has an enviable social media operation.

There are “independent media” operations under the names of private businesses here but they all really operate under the thumb of the Sheikhs and the UAE’s Media Regulatory Office (MRO). The office registers and licenses all forms of print, broadcast, digital and audio media in the country. Al Fares says he and all MBN journalists must get their licenses renewed each year.

It's not unusual for government officials to use the license renewal process to raise questions about stories that the government didn’t like. Reporters like Al Fares covet interviews with VIPs, a class of sources over which the government can exercise tight control. As a result, a reporter who has written stories the government considers unfavorable might find it difficult or impossible to land interviews that will distinguish their stories. It’s not unheard of for officials in the MRO to suggest a reporter’s access might improve if he or she plays ball with UAE intelligence agents.

“It’s a diplomacy,” Al Fares says of the renewal process. “You just go in and talk to them.”

Even though the MRO maintains strict control of the media, Al Fares says he’s never heard of a reporter’s license being denied. In contrast to many of the stations here, Alhurra sticks to fair, objective journalism without bias, a lofty goal that doesn’t always work to its advantage. Consumers, like those in the U.S., often gravitate towards social media posts with outlandish and untrue headlines or stories.

*Swiss-Mile CEO Dr. Marko Bjelonic with his embodied AI robot. Photo by James O’Shea.*

Nevertheless, Al Fares says reporting for an American news outlet that promotes good journalism is challenging yet rewarding. “I enjoy my work;” he says, adding that he’s worked in more censored news environments and prefers the American model. As we meandered around the exhibits, he awaited a call from a government official who would line up one of the interviews he sought. Finally, he got the call.

I stayed behind to look at the self-driving buses, taxis, cars and technologies that will no doubt impact the future of Dubai and the rest of the world. At the Swiss-Mile robot exhibit, the company’s young CEO, Dr. Marko Bjelonic, told me about “embodied” AI. “This is something you’re likely to hear more about” he says, describing it as a form of AI that enables robots to learn skills to do mundane tasks in a real world. “It doesn’t help to have a robot if it just walks around. It has to do something.”

Soon cameraman Daouen and Al Fares return to do a set piece with the reporter walking out of the self-driving bus that will be driving people around Dubai if Sheikh Maktoum has his way.

As we leave the exhibit hall, I spot a massive billboard portraying a dashing man in horse racing garb fit for the Kentucky Derby charging ahead on a racing steed. Al Fares tells me the man portrayed on the billboard is Sheikh Maktoum, the billionaire head of the country whose glamorous lifestyle and $800,000 summer vacations in Italy are fodder for the tabloids. Besides being a proponent of self-driving cars, he's a legendary owner and breeder of racehorses. Looking up at the billboard, Al Fares shrugs and says: “He likes people to know that he likes horses.”

—James O’Shea

James O’Shea is a longtime Chicago author and journalist who now lives in North Carolina. He is the author of several books and is the former editor of the Los Angeles Times and managing editor of the Chicago Tribune. Follow Jim’s Five W’s Substack here.

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Any opinions or observations in this blog are purely those of the author and do not represent the official positions of the Middle East Broadcasting Networks (MBN) or of the U.S. State Department’s Agency for Global Media, which administers federal grants to the MBN.

A Rich Man’s Enclave

“It’s a diplomacy,” Al Fares says of the renewal process. “You just go in and talk to them.”