TO think he's not a fucking teddy bear?

[Bunlicker]

^Friends and associates of Mr Matthew said they were astounded to hear that the genteel editor was under arrest. “He is the biggest teddy bear I know,” said one family friend.

Aibu to think this is shocking reporting?

Intentionally throwing a hammer at a person is a pretty clear indication of the man's character.

British newspaper editor 'admits he accidentally killed wife by throwing a hammer at her in their Dubai home' - The Telegraph
apple.news/ALsGp3iLhSV23LnKUEzkOFA

Are you genuinely not understanding anything I post or what? I'm sure you're not stupid. It feels like you're trying to pick apart my posts, say something back to me that I didn't say and then that means you 'win'. When the conversation is about the way newspapers in the UK report dv.

I said a polish editor here. As in I'd fully expect him or her to understand English and not being in an expat bubble.

First post directed at turtles and second at cory

Bunlicker, Hurtle has already agreed on the DV question.

It's just the language question- which surely is irrelevant anyway?

If it turns out he is guilty of wife murder, why on earth would it help if he was completely fluent in every Arabic dialect under the sun? And if the system is corrupt, then isn't it quite possible they might have found some other way to make him sign a fake confession if it had turned out he was an accomplished Arabic scholar? Hurtle was only trying to hint at one way an untrue confession could have happened. You chose to pick that up and run with it.

To recap: if he is guilty of murder, then we don't need to prove that he is a stereotypically arrogant ex-pat with no interest in the local population because wife murder is horror enough in its own right.

And if he is not guilty of murder, then we can only hope that the authorities will put their energies into finding out who is, and then the testimonies to his character will become irrelevant.

Bunlicker

No, you are saying this man would have been fluent in written Arabic and therefore would have understood what he was signing; this is not true. There is nothing that dictates he had to have a fluent level of written Arabic - the courts have even now assigned him a translator.

You seem hell bent on trying to accuse a man of a crime which he may not have actually committed. There has been NO TRIAL yet. You cannot have a go at the papers for referring to him as a teddy bear (direct quote from his friends) when he has not actually been found guilty of any crime.

This thread would have been more appropriate after a trial if he was found guilty.

bunlicker The whole reason we are discussing his Arabic level is because you think he would have understand what was written in whatever confession he signed; I disagree. There is nothing to suggest this man was fluent in written Arabic at all.

Like many foreigners before him, he possibly had no idea what he was signing when he "confessed".

Bunlicker Tue 11-Jul-17 12:56:22
"I said a polish editor here. As in I'd fully expect him or her to understand English and not being in an expat bubble."

You do get that English is actually the most spoken language in Dubai? And that ex-pats form the majority of the population: in 2013 it was estimated that 15% of the population of the Emirate of Dubai are UAE nationals; the rest are foreign workers/ex-pats of some sort, some wealthy business men, but many of them poor- and non-Arab speaking.

This ex-pat bubble of which you speak is actually the majority of the population, and pretty well all the people doing the shit jobs.

It just can't be compared to the situation of a foreigner in England.

I don't think it's wrong for the journalist to ask friends and acquaintances about the man. I read their comments to suggest there was a huge gap between his public persona and how he evidently behaved in private. However I find it very strange there was little about his wife. If she was a feature on the social circuit surely someone somewhere would have had something to say about her to balance things out.

You cannot have a go at the papers for referring to him as a teddy bear (direct quote from his friends) when he has not actually been found guilty of any crime

That doesn't read like someone who does actually agree Cory.

However I find it very strange there was little about his wife. If she was a feature on the social circuit surely someone somewhere would have had something to say about her to balance things out.

These types of articles very rarely do have anything to say about the victim, other than she was "married to a brilliant Xyz"

Now once we leave the language question, I agree with you, Bunlicker. I think it is deeply problematic to have the first articles reporting the crime filled with testimonials to the husb

You can't report Domestic Violence accurately until someone has been found guilty of Domestic Violence, or a substantial amount of evidence is shared early on by a reliable police source which is backed up by forensics.

Can you not see how neither of these things have happened in this case yet?

Can you not see how in the case of Clodagh Hawe's these facts were identified and reported very early on (and therefore it is correct the media response was vile).

sorry, don't know why that posted

as we were: deeply problematic to have first articles reporting crime filled with testimonials to the husband (who is at least still a suspect) rather than the wife.

If there is no risk, in the present case, of this skewed reporting influencing a jury, I think the British press should at least give some consideration to how this general tendency might affect other DV victims (whatever the status of Mrs M) considering reporting their situation: oh, it's no use, they'll only call him a really really nice person and suggest he must have been driven to it.

I thought Hurtle agreed with this too in previous posts, but she seems now to have swung back to a position of "there is no problem with filling articles with testimonial to suspect rather than to deceased".

You don't have to report DV to cut out the testimonials to the husband. Just cut them out: that is not the same as pointing him out as the perpetrator before his trial.

Cory I agreed that there should be testimonials shared about Mrs Matthews - I also think there may be reasons why that has happened yet (namely the really odd delay in death being reported...)

I did say that I thought these would come out in the coming days now that people were aware that this has happened and people were beginning to discuss it on social media.

The testimonial of the suspect would have been to hand as he worked at the newspaper previously (I suspect they just looked at his personal file and asked for a couple of comments from coworkers at the Gulf News).

Yes, the UK journalists could have cut out those testimonials.

Yes, I can see why there may be problems with the reporting. But it's not so much what is left out that worries me, it's what's being put in. That desperate need to tell us that the suspect is a "nice man", from a "nice" background, went to Winchester, no less, and this is how much his parents paid in school fees. The wife, in the meantime, has presumably never been educated anywhere.

It is a bit of a sobering thought that if dh were to take a rifle and go and shoot his bank manager, the subsequent reporting would almost certainly be about the horrendous loss the victim was to his family, what a lovely man he was and a little about what his background and achievements were.

But if he were to shoot me, then the reporting would probably be about dh, about how lovely everybody always thought him, and eventually (once his guilt was established) with some speculation as to what made him flip, with some general reflections on the sadness of it all, like some ghastly disease that had overtaken our family and hit him particularly badly.

Or to put it in a way more relevant to the case, if dh were to be arrested on some other charge not as yet proven, whether bank manager shooting or armed robbery or terrorism, it is unlikely that the subsequent reporting would be filled with tributes to him- though presumably the presumption of innocence applies to all those charges too.

Posts and statements relating to the case were removed yesterday (according to Dubai residents). Journalists were removing them due to comments.

There is a dissonance between this style of reporting and the fact women are most likely to be murdered by a spouse/partner/ex. The solution is to just report the facts: Man X was charged for crime against victim Y, these folowing details are known....

If you must put an editorial slant on it a concluding paragraph reasserting how women are most likely murdered by a man known to them, and X number of women have been slain already this year. Add correlations between domestic violence and murder. Then sign off with a sentence along the lines: "If you suffer in an abusive relationship here are some details of organisations that can help.

That would show bias though Derval. Calling someone a teddy bear is obviously neutral.

Hurtle

"Controversially, he's been pretty out spoken about certain Middle Eastern countries recently and not in a positive way at all."

What did he speak out about?

I worked in Dubai in the 90s/00s; agree that he would not necessarily need to speak/read Arabic to be editor of the Gulf News

Bun
You really do not have to speak or read Arabic to work in Dubai.

Regardless of whether he is guilty of not, the Telegraph article, with all the talk if 'teddybears' is shocking reporting

AssignedMentalAtBirth

Qatar, Daesh (and how it's an issue for both Sunni and Shia Muslim's which would not go down well), UAE finding it's voice against Injustice...

I'd like to see an article that talks about Jane Matthew, her achievements and then the circumstances surrounding her death- at which point the husband can be mentioned.

Also absolutely fine to mention that foreigners don't always get a fair trial and illustrate why.

This way you actually honour her memory and it's fair to him as well whatever the truth is.

Hurtle

Shame the newspaper did not point to the possibility that it was a forced confession. When they chose this angle.