The curious case of the Doha News website block

Doha News has operated for nearly eight years, six of which have been as a website.

JEDDAH: The blocking of the Doha News website in Qatar “amounts to censorship”, its managers say, amid widespread speculation over the reasons behind a decision to restrict access to the service.
The website managers said it was blocked on Nov. 30, meaning Internet users within Qatar are unable to access it when surfing the web via a standard domestic connection. It is still accessible to Internet users outside of Qatar.
The website managers said the service has been forced to scale back its output after being blocked.
The reported reason for the move, according to authorities, was due to the licensing status of the website. But Doha News said in a statement that the block amounts to an act of censorship.
“Doha News has operated for nearly eight years, six of which have been as a website. The website is registered and hosted in the US, and advertising is sold locally through licensed Qatari partners,” the statement said.
“Qatar doesn’t regulate the Internet and it’s absurd to block a website and say the website is not registered. How many other websites on the Internet have registered in Qatar?
“There are no two ways around the fact that the government has chosen to block access to the site because they aren’t happy with everything that we publish. And that amounts to censorship.
“When we sat down with a government representative on Thursday, they indicated that several ministries were upset with Doha News. They brought up licensing as one reason (but not the only one) they blocked our site. Another issue mentioned was perceived inaccuracies in previous stories, but no examples were offered, and no attempts were made to offer ‘correct’ facts.
“We believe this is simply a heavy-handed attempt to get us to fall in line with other local media outlets and stymie any attempts at critical reporting in the country.”
A source close to Doha News said they too doubted that licensing was an issue behind the blocking of the site. “If this was true it would have been shut from day one,” the source told Arab News.
Unconfirmed information being circulated on the Qatari media scene suggests several other possible reasons for the sudden blocking of Doha News.
One possibility could be that the site — through consistent and solid professional reporting — could be seen to have been undermining and beating local Qatari press and the official QNA news agency.
“This doesn’t fly well, given that the founders and staff of Doha News are not locals,” said one source.
Shabina S. Khatri, executive editor and co-founder of Doha News, said that this was a “likely” factor behind the blocking of the site.
Another unconfirmed reason behind the blocking of the site is that that it carries articles by a Qatari columnist deemed controversial, sources said.
Khatri said she was not sure whether this could have been a factor in the blocking of the site.
“We don’t have any columnists on staff, but we did run a few opinion pieces recently by different Qataris who challenged the status quo. I am not sure if this was the tipping point,” she told Arab News.
According to sources, another unconfirmed factor behind the blocking of Doha News is that it recently named a local Qatari who has been convicted of killing a minor in car accident — going against the norm of not naming nationals involved in court casts. Khatri said, however, that she did not believe this to be the reason, as the website almost always names convicted persons, even if they are Qatari.
Doha News is the brainchild of Khatri and her husband and fellow journalist Omar Chatriwala, who is the cofounder and publisher.
Khatri, who is currently in the US, said Qatar’s decision to block the site was not a snap decision.
“However, I don’t understand why authorities did not approach us about our licensing and whatever other problems they had with us before choosing to block us in Qatar,” she told Arab News.
“This seems very drastic and makes their claims that they aren’t censoring us very hard to believe.”