Dubai beyond the headlines: Resilience, not ruin

The UAE has borne the brunt of this US-Israel-Iran war, defending itself against more than 2,000 missiles. Yet, rather than reporting on the scale of this assault, or the effectiveness of the nation's defence systems, segments of Western media have reverted to familiar tropes: apocalyptic projections of economic collapse

- Aysha Taryam, Editor in Chief, Gulf Today

As the government and people of the UAE continue to stand resolute and live well through the ongoing war, the nation finds itself facing a different kind of assault.

It is not new, yet under these circumstances, it is particularly striking that the UAE must defend itself not only against missiles, but also against the relentless barrage of Western media — much of which has seen fit to mobilize against its achievements and, at times, revel in its hardship.

In 2012, in the early years of my tenure as Editor-in-Chief of the Gulf Today newspaper, I witnessed the rise of this now-familiar phenomenon — a wave of Dubai-bashing that gained momentum during the depths of the financial crisis. In response, I wrote a piece titled “An Open Letter to The Guardian.” It was prompted by the newspaper's editorial predicting Dubai's demise. I was struck by the audacity of its claims—largely speculative, heavily opinionated, and lacking substantive context. More disheartening still was seeing respected journalistic institutions, ones I had long admired and learned from, descend toward tabloid like standards in their eagerness to undermine a young nation steadily asserting itself on the global stage.