Policy Desk

Published institutional analysis and published institutional data. The unit is a dated document a named institution put its own name to: a report, a working paper, a statistical release, an outlook, a review, a standard, a ratings action or a published dataset. The preferred subject is a question two named institutions have both published on, and their positions are carried side by side. A single institution's document is also a subject where the document itself supplies the second reference point: its own previous edition with both dates, a figure it cites from another named body, or a published series it revises. What is never a subject: a regulatory instrument, which belongs to MENA Review; a disclosed vehicle, mandate, allocation or transaction, which belongs to Investor Arabia; a plain news story about a company, a contract or a deal, which belongs to the trade titles and is not this title's work whatever else is true of it. Every position and every figure is attributed to the institution that published it, with the document and its date; the title holds no position, offers no synthesis and issues no verdict. A document is not a subject when what it is about is UAE or Saudi government policy, sovereign or diplomatic affairs, an official of either state, or either state's security: quoting an institution on those is producing them, so the document is dropped rather than summarised. For every country, military conduct is never narrated; the commercial and economic consequence is the coverage. Never a forecast reported as a finding: a projection is written as the projection that institution published, with its date and its stated basis.

The same rule decides what reaches Orient Brief rather than one of the other nine titles. See the editorial policy.