Writing on the Wall Street

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Critics have slammed the business news media for failing to predict the current financial crisis.

Hamilton, however, admits that the obsession with stock markets is a crime most newsrooms have been guilty of.

"One of the biggest lessons learnt from the meltdown is that we should pay less attention to the stock markets," he says. "They're very tempting to cover because they're easy to understand and they're basically horse races. You know who's winning, and who's losing."

The US debt market is about 24 percent larger than the stock market and, as most Gulf investors will know by now, problems there can freeze the gears of the entire global economy. Still, would readers have been interested in more stories about bond yields and credit ratings?

Journalists also need to learn more about derivatives and find credible analysts who can talk about them, according to Hamilton. Post-meltdown, a number of publications have been very good at breaking down what happened in the economy into very simple components, she points out.

"You need to go beyond self-interested experts to get the answers," Hamilton says. "It's hard to do that in unregulated and complicated markets, but even in those markets there will be academics and outsiders who have made it their business to find out what's going on."

Jawad of Zawya and CNBC's Hall agree that the biggest problem their organisations face is a lack of access to decision makers, but both hope the current crisis has taught Middle East business leaders the value of transparency.

A lack of information has stopped CNBC Arabia from covering some stories for fear of engaging in speculation.

"We have our credibility to look after, and it does drive us to a greater conservatism in our approach," says Hall. "I don't see that as self-censorship; I see it as caution, because the worst thing we can do is absolutely get a story wrong."

Jawad insists that local authorities have never tried to stop a news story on Zawya, and claims that if the regional media got rid of their self-censorship, they would be pleasantly surprised. "Having said that, we haven't been encouraged [to do more digging] either," he admits.

The UAE's draft media law is generally seen as being an improvement over the existing one, which has been in force since 1980 and stipulates prison sentences for a number of offences. However, the new legislation has still been criticised for being too vague. Publishing misleading stories that "harm the national economy", for example, could cost news outlets up to $500,000 in fines under the new rules.

"Not knowing where the lines are, encourages one to stand behind them and not test the waters," says Hall.

Despite operating within a different legal framework, he says many Western journalists still practice self-censorship, albeit for other reasons.

"I would be remiss if I didn't mention the form self-censorship takes in the US, where it's often that you don't want to burn a source. If you were getting behind-the-scenes comments from Alan Greenspan, you would be very careful about what you said," Hamilton explains.

"There's also the self-censorship that comes from not wanting to look silly in front of your peers. If you've written about the housing bubble over the last couple of years, and you want to write about it again, you run the risk of being laughed at when it never happens."

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