Middle East Eye

Middle East Eye (MEE) is a UK-based news website covering events in the Middle East and North Africa. MEE describes itself as an "independently funded online news organization that was founded in April 2014." MEE seeks to be the primary portal of Middle East news, and describes its target audience as "all those communities of readers living in and around the region that care deeply for its fate".

TypeOnline
Editor-in-chiefDavid Hearst[1]
FoundedApril 2014 (April 2014)
Headquarters1 Sussex Place, London, England, United Kingdom[2]
Websitemiddleeasteye.net

Its claims of editorial and financial independence have been disputed.

Organisation

Middle East Eye is edited by David Hearst,[3] a former foreign leader writer for The Guardian.[4] MEE employs about 20 full-time staff in its London office.[3]

According to British corporate records, it is owned by Middle East Eye Ltd, a UK company incorporated in 2013 under Jamal Awn Jamal Bessasso, a Palestinian born in Kuwait, and a former official of Al Jazeera and Al-Quds TV in Lebanon. David Hearst denied that Bessasso was the owner of the news site, but refrained from divulging the real owner.[5][6]

MEE has been accused of being backed by Qatar.[7][8] According to its critics, it began to form in London when the Islamist influence of Al Jazeera was beginning to wane in 2013, and that several Al Jazeera journalists joined its team.[9] The governments of Saudi Arabia, UAE, Egypt and Bahrain accuse MEE of pro-Muslim Brotherhood bias and receiving Qatari funding. They have demanded MEE be shut down following the Saudi-led blockade of Qatar.[3][10] MEE has denied the accusations, saying that it is an independent news site, not funded by any country or movement.[11]

Coverage

Middle East Eye covers a range of topics across the Middle East. According to its website, it reports on events in 22 different countries. Content is separated into different categories on its website including news, opinion and essays.[12]

Since the foundation of the media outlet, it has provided exclusives on a number of major events in the Middle East, which have often been picked up by other media outlets globally. In early June 2017, an anonymous hacker group began distributing emails to multiple news outlets that they had hacked from the inbox of Yousef Otaiba, the UAE's ambassador in Washington D.C.[13] This included providing details from leaked emails of Mohammed bin Salman and US officials.[14] This revelation on 14 August 2017, led to other media outlets printing other material from the leaked emails.[15][16] According to The New York Times, the hacked emails appeared to benefit Qatar and be the work of hackers working for Qatar, a common subject of the distributed emails.[17]

On July 29, 2016, MEE published a story alleging that the government of the United Arab Emirates, aided by Palestinian exile Mohammed Dahlan, had funnelled significant sums of money to conspirators of the 2016 Turkish coup d'état attempt two weeks earlier.[18] In 2017, Dahlan brought a lawsuit of libel against the MEE in a London court seeking damages of up to £250,000. However, Dahlan abandoned the suit shortly before the case was to begin. In a statement, Dahlan maintained that the story was "fully fabricated" but claimed that he has "achieved his goals in the English courts," and was now planning to sue Facebook in Dublin where the article was "widely published". However, according to MEE and their lawyers, by dropping the claim, Dahlan would be forced to pay all the legal costs, of both parties, estimated to be in excess of £500,000.[19][20]

In November 2019, the Turkish government officially accused Dahlan of involvement in the 2016 Turkish coup d'état attempt and is offering $700,000 for information leading to his capture.[21]

Notable contributors

Jamal Khashoggi

Jamal Khashoggi wrote for MEE prior to joining The Washington Post.[36][37]

According to a post on the MEE website, Khashoggi wrote for them over a period of two years. According to MEE, his op-eds were not credited to him at the time due to concerns for his safety because many of his articles for MEE are critical of Saudi Arabia and its policies, and Saudi Arabia's rift with Qatar.[36] Khashoggi, a Washington Post columnist, was assassinated when he entered the Saudi consulate in Turkey on 2 October 2018. After initial denials, Saudi Arabia stated that he was killed by rogue assassins inside the consulate building with "premeditated intention".[38]

Middle East tensions

Blocking

In 2016, the United Arab Emirates blocked the Middle East Eye in what was a countrywide ban. MEE says it contacted the UAE embassy in London for an explanation, but never received a response.[39] Saudi Arabia also blocked the website across the country in May 2017. Following protests against the President Abdel Fattah el-Sisi in September and October 2019, Egypt also blocked the website.[40]

2017–2018 Qatar diplomatic crisis

Saudi Arabia has accused MEE of being a news outlet funded by Qatar (both directly and indirectly).[41] On 22 June 2017, during the Qatar diplomatic crisis, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Egypt, and Bahrain, as part of a list of 13 demands, demanded that Qatar close Middle East Eye, which they saw as sympathetic to the Muslim Brotherhood and a Qatari-funded and aligned outlet.[41][42][43]

MEE denies receiving funds from them stating that 'the demand as an attempt to "extinguish any free voice which dares to question what they are doing."[44] In a statement responding to the demand, the publication's editor-in-chief said "MEE covers the area without fear or favour, and we have carried reports critical of the Qatari authorities, for instance how workers from the subcontinent are treated on building projects for the 2022 World Cup."[45][46]

Cyberattack

In April 2020, MEE was one of 20 websites targeted by hackers that cybersecurity experts, ESET, have linked to an Israeli surveillance company called Candiru. The website was impacted using a Watering hole attack which serves malicious code to certain visitors allowing the attackers to compromise their PCs.[47]

Controversies

On 20 October 2022, MEE cut ties with Palestinian journalist Shatha Hammad after it was discovered that she made a Facebook post in 2014 which praised Adolf Hitler for "sharing the same ideology" and the Holocaust. The Thomson Reuters Foundation had withdrawn a 2022 Kurt Schork Award in International Journalism from her, after the discovery, on 18 October.[48][49][50][51]

Commentator Ibrahim Alkhamis writing in the Saudi newspaper Arab News claimed that the MEE of propagating rumours and fabrications regarding the Qatar's state enemies such as Saudi Arabia, UAE, and Egypt, while being silent on the misdeeds of Qatars on the members of its royal family. MEE is said to function as an "extension to Al Jazeera" without being accused as a state-owned news outlet.[9]

References
  1. "David Hearst". Middle East Eye. Archived from the original on 11 April 2019. Retrieved 26 April 2021.
  2. "About – Coverage". Middle Easy Eye. Archived from the original on 11 June 2019. Retrieved 26 April 2021.
  3. Mayhew, Freddy (2017-06-29). "UK-based Middle East news outlet also targeted for closure in Saudi-led demands against Qatar". Press Gazette. Retrieved 2023-10-22.
  4. "David Hearst | The Guardian". the Guardian. Archived from the original on 2021-11-08. Retrieved 2021-11-08.
  5. Langton, James (2014-06-26). "New London connection to Islamists". The National. Retrieved 2023-10-22.
  6. Rubin, Michael (2017-07-25). "Qatar's Other Covert Media Arm". American Enterprise Institute - AEI. Retrieved 2023-10-22.
  7. Berman, Ilan (2018). Digital Dictators: Media, Authoritarianism, and America's New Challenge. American Foreign Policy Council. Rowman & Littlefield Publishers. p. 90. ISBN 978-1-5381-1991-4. Archived from the original on 2022-04-02. Retrieved 2021-12-23.
  8. James M. Dorsey [in German] (2017). "The Gulf Crisis: Small States Battle it Out". SSRN 3003598.
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  12. "News page". Middle East Eye. Archived from the original on 2019-03-20. Retrieved 2019-02-04.
  13. "Someone Is Using These Leaked Emails To Embarrass Washington's Most Powerful Ambassador". HuffPost. June 3, 2017. Archived from the original on February 10, 2019. Retrieved November 8, 2021.
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  24. Jonathan Cook, bio, Middle East Eye
  25. "From Obama to Trump: The lessons, the challenges". Middle East Eye. February 2, 2017.
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  27. "Turkey: Why the West should show more support". Middle East Eye. January 26, 2017.
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  29. "Ali Lmrabet bio". Middle East Eye.
  30. "Gideon Levy bio". Middle East Eye.
  31. "Political Islam will go the same way as nationalism and communism". Middle East Eye. June 15, 2016.
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  34. Madawi al-Rasheed bio, Middle East Eye
  35. "Sarah Leah Whitson bio". Middle East Eye.
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