Middle East Eye (MEE) is a

London London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary dow ...

-based news website covering events in the

Middle East The Middle East ( ar, الشرق الأوسط, ISO 233: ) is a geopolitical region commonly encompassing Arabia (including the Arabian Peninsula and Bahrain), Asia Minor (Asian part of Turkey except Hatay Province), East Thrace (Europ ...

and

North Africa North Africa, or Northern Africa is a region encompassing the northern portion of the African continent. There is no singularly accepted scope for the region, and it is sometimes defined as stretching from the Atlantic shores of Mauritania in t ...

. 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".

Organisation

MEE is edited by David Hearst, a former foreign leader writer for the British daily, ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper A newspaper is a periodical publication containing written information about current events and is often typed in black ink with a white or gray background. Newspapers can cover a wide ...

''. MEE is owned by Middle East Eye Ltd, a UK company incorporated in 2013 under the sole name of Jamal Awn Jamal Bessasso. It employs about 20 full-time staff in its

office. MEE has been accused of being backed by

Qatar Qatar (, ; ar, قطر, Qaṭar ; local vernacular pronunciation: ), officially the State of Qatar,) is a country in Western Asia. It occupies the Qatar Peninsula on the northeastern coast of the Arabian Peninsula in the Middle East; it ...

. The governments of

Saudi Arabia Saudi Arabia, officially the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (KSA), is a country in Western Asia. It covers the bulk of the Arabian Peninsula, and has a land area of about , making it the List of Asian countries by area, fifth-largest country in Asia ...

, UAE,

Egypt Egypt ( ar, مصر , ), officially the Arab Republic of Egypt, is a transcontinental country spanning the northeast corner of Africa and southwest corner of Asia via a land bridge formed by the Sinai Peninsula. It is bordered by the Med ...

and

Bahrain Bahrain ( ; ; ar, البحرين, al-Bahrayn, locally ), officially the Kingdom of Bahrain, ' is an island country in Western Asia. It is situated on the Persian Gulf, and comprises a small archipelago made up of 50 natural islands and an ...

accuse MEE of pro-

Muslim Brotherhood The Society of the Muslim Brothers ( ar, جماعة الإخوان المسلمين'' ''), better known as the Muslim Brotherhood ( ', is a transnational Sunni Islamist organization founded in Egypt by Islamic scholar and schoolteacher Hassa ...

bias and receiving Qatari funding. As a consequence, they demanded MEE to be shut down following the Saudi-led blockade of

. MEE has denied the accusations, saying that they are independent of any government or movement and are not funded by Qatar. On 20 October 2022, MEE cut ties with Palestinian journalist Shatha Hammad after it was discovered that she made a

Facebook Facebook is an online social media and social networking service owned by American company Meta Platforms. Founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerberg with fellow Harvard College students and roommates Eduardo Saverin, Andrew McCollum, Dustin ...

post in 2014 which praised

Adolf Hitler Adolf Hitler (; 20 April 188930 April 1945) was an Austrian-born German politician who was dictator of Nazi Germany, Germany from 1933 until Death of Adolf Hitler, his death in 1945. Adolf Hitler's rise to power, He rose to power as the le ...

for "sharing the same ideology" and

the Holocaust The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; ...

. The Thomson Reuters Foundation had withdrawn a 2022 Kurt Schork Award in International Journalism from her, after the discovery, on 18 October.

Coverage

Middle East Eye covers a range of topics across the

. 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. Since the foundation of the media outlet, it has provided exclusives on a number of major events in the

, 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. This included providing details from leaked emails of Mohammed bin Salman and US officials. This revelation on 14 August 2017, led to other media outlets to print other material from the leaked emails. According to

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

, the hacked emails appeared to benefit

and be the work of hackers working for Qatar, a common subject of the distributed emails. On July 29, 2016, MEE published a story alleging that the government of the

United Arab Emirates The United Arab Emirates (UAE; ar, اَلْإِمَارَات الْعَرَبِيَة الْمُتَحِدَة ), or simply the Emirates ( ar, الِْإمَارَات ), is a country in Western Asia ( The Middle East). It is located at ...

, 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. 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

Dublin Dublin (; , or ) is the capital and largest city of Ireland. On a bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the province of Leinster, bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, a part of the Wicklow Mountains range. At the 2016 ...

where the article was “widely published”. However, according to MEE and their lawyers, by dropping the claim, Dahlan will be forced to pay all the legal costs, of both parties, estimated to be in excess of £500,000. 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.

Criticism of coverage

Saudi Arabia accused MEE of being a news outlet funded by Qatar (both directly and indirectly). 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. Middle East Eye denied it has ever received Qatari funds.

Notable contributors

* Alistair Burt – British MP * Ian Cobain – Senior Reporter for MEE * Jonathan Cook – Journalist, Nazareth * Ahmet Davutoglu – Former Prime Minister of

Turkey Turkey ( tr, Türkiye ), officially the Republic of Türkiye ( tr, Türkiye Cumhuriyeti, links=no ), is a list of transcontinental countries, transcontinental country located mainly on the Anatolia, Anatolian Peninsula in Western Asia, with ...

* Richard A. Falk – Professor Emeritus of International Law at

Princeton University Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the n ...

* Daniel Kawczynski – British MP * Faisal Kutty – Canadian lawyer, law professor at

Barry University Barry University is a private Catholic university in Miami Shores, Florida. Founded in 1940 by the Adrian Dominican Sisters, it is one of the largest Catholic universities in the Southeast and is within the territory of the Archdiocese of Mi ...

and Osgoode Hall Law School and human rights activist * Ali Lmrabet – Moroccan journalist, El Mundo * Gideon Levy – ''Haaretz'' columnist * Moncef Marzouki – former president of

Tunisia ) , image_map = Tunisia location (orthographic projection).svg , map_caption = Location of Tunisia in northern Africa , image_map2 = , capital = Tunis , largest_city = capital , ...

* Joseph Massad – professor,

Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manha ...

* Peter Oborne – former ''Daily Mail'' and ''Daily Telegraph'' columnist * Madawi al-Rasheed – visiting professor at the Middle East Institute of the

London School of Economics , mottoeng = To understand the causes of things , established = , type = Public research university , endowment = £240.8 million (2021) , budget = £391.1 mill ...

Sarah Leah Whitson Sarah Leah Whitson is an American lawyer and former director of the Middle East and North Africa division of Human Rights Watch. Early life and education Whitson was reared by an Armenian American mother, Ashi Whitson, who was born in the Armeni ...

–

Human Rights Watch Human Rights Watch (HRW) is an international non-governmental organization, headquartered in New York City, that conducts research and advocacy on human rights. The group pressures governments, policy makers, companies, and individual human ...

Jamal Khashoggi

Jamal Khashoggi wrote for MEE prior to joining ''

The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large n ...

''. 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. Khashoggi, a ''Washington Post'' columnist, was assassinated when he entered the Saudi consulate in

on 2 October 2018. After initial denials,

stated that he was killed by rogue assassins inside the consulate building with "premeditated intention".

Middle East tensions

Blocking

In 2016, the

blocked the Middle East Eye in what was a countrywide ban. MEE says it contacted the UAE embassy in

for an explanation, but never received a response. 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.

2017–2018 Qatar diplomatic crisis

In June 2017,

, UAE,

and

ended their diplomatic relationships with Qatar, followed by a list of 13 demands to restore diplomatic relations. MEE was mentioned in one of the demands to be shut down by Qatar even though the news organisation 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." 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."

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.

References

External links

Official website
{{Authority control 2014 establishments in the United Kingdom Publications established in 2014 Mass media in London Mass media in the Middle East Muslim Brotherhood