Comment: Journalism in the Maldives

This recent attack has prompted me to share some thoughts from my own personal experiences of working as a journalist in the Maldives for much of 2012. The name of the newspaper I worked for was Minivan News – the word ‘Minivan’ meaning independent in the local language.

My time in the Maldives was a fantastic one, but also one of frustration and bemusement at the persistent refusal by many to accept the existence of political impartiality within Maldivian society. Many will already be reaching for their keyboards as they read this, to write disparaging comments about myself, about Minivan News, or about the Maldivian Democratic Party (MDP) – who founded the newspaper in 2005. This was a persistent tactic used by commenters on most of the articles I wrote for Minivan and many of the pieces I produced for other publications at the time.

The most commonly repeated rumours were that we worked very closely with the MDP leadership, in particular with Nasheed himself, and that we were all given a strict editorial line to follow. In actuality, this couldn’t be further from the truth. Personally, I met with Nasheed only once during my time in the Maldives. Three days before I left, I requested a personal meeting with him as he was somebody I had come to admire greatly (and also, because I had never met a President before).