The Middle East Eye: A Case of Manufacturing News
Hearst and others in MEE weaponize their stories by propagating fake news with anonymous sources, thereby misleading human rights organizations and other news outlets
In the world of political media, ownership is a strong issue that implies editorial influence. This in itself is harmless as it grants a level of transparency to an outlet. We know that Al Jazeera belongs to Qatar’s royal family, yet the family denies having editorial influence over this media powerhouse, Al Arabiya to MBC Group, Fox News to Murdoch and CNN to AT&T. Media ownership is a fact of the business world, which isn’t inherently negative, but public awareness of media outlet ownership is essential to understanding its perspective and influence, whether it be in the cultural, or the geopolitical realm.
While the Arab uprisings were beginning to phase out post-2013, the success of Al Jazeera in pushing and platforming Islamists was beginning to wane, especially when garnering support from Western audiences. In its infancy, an outlet with the name “Middle East Eye” (MEE) began to form in London, UK. While the world was taken aback by the seemingly unexpected Arab spring, MEE’s job listings were “posted” and its staff was carefully selected.
As an outlet that brands itself as “independent,” MEE has had many Al Jazeera journalists freelancing for or joining its content production team, thus causing red flags to be raised in regards to its financing. David Hearst, the current MEE Editor and a former foreign correspondent for The Guardian, refused to give details about the outlet’s finances, attributing its existence to “individual private donors”, who he claimed were “interested in democracy in the Middle East”.
Since its early days, MEE took constant jabs at issues across the Middle East, always conveniently leaving Qatar outside of the picture. With time, MEE’s attempts at branding became a long-winded effort, given that their efforts mirrored Al Jazeera’s editorial policy, carrying concerns of Islamist attempts at a one dimensional so-called “democracy” and selective human rights issues all over the region but halting to a full stop when it came to Qatar’s internal issues or rampant foreign policy. In other words, it was the same message that forms the founding pillar of Al Jazeera, just with a different media house packaging.
Given this, it is alarming that many human rights organisations such as the Human Rights Watch (HRW) and Amnesty International use MEE’s articles as a point of reference. So does the New York Times and Germany’s Deutsche Welle (DW) and the Washington Post. With no justification towards its reliability as an outlet in reporting facts on its subject countries, MEE’s reporting seems to persistently fall short of one nation in the Middle East.
There are virtually no articles discussing the imprisonment of royal family members of Qatar, the most infamous story being the one of the imprisoned Sheikh Talal bin Abdul Aziz Al-Thani and the abuses towards his wife and children by the Qatari government during his imprisonment MEE, however, publishes many articles harbouring random rumours and fabricated stories that have been pumped through the production line against Qatar’s most notable enemies, especially Saudi Arabia, UAE and Egypt.
Thes articles attacking Qatar’s enemies are displayed as fact with an obscure source, making sure the headline hits hard against readers’ perceptions, many reinforcing stereotypical attitudes towards enemy states. This is mirrored through David Hearst’s previous articles during his time with the Guardian, many absurd articles claiming that the Gaza War in 2014 was backed by Saudi Arabia, a claim he repeated in 2018, but with a slightly adjusted story, that it’s Mohammed Bin Salman who was pushing a war with Gaza. Hearst also famously claimed that Saudi Arabia supports Houthis as a means to stop Islamists from winning in Yemen, a group Saudi Arabia went to war against in 2015, two years following Hearst’s dubious claims.
If David Hearst has any connections to particular sources behind his articles and claims, it seems to be mainly Islamist propaganda links that drip-feed him stories, wherein no better appointment to take than as Editor in Chief of the MEE surrounded by ex-Al Jazeera staff members such as Arwa Ibrahim and Jacob Powell who transitioned from Al Jazeera to work as MEE news editors, and Graeme Baker and Larry Johnson moved from Al Jazeera to MEE to become senior editors.
The production of fabricated stories and circulation of rumours to muddy the waters towards various and globally reaching human rights organisations was a forever spinning wheel for the Middle East Eye. This media house has kept using unsourced allegations of Saudi Prince Muti’b’s torture, and Prince Talal’s alleged hunger strike was pushed as exclusive news that was subsequently parroted by Iranian news outlet Press TV, Pro Hezbollah outlet Al Manar TV, and later even used as a source for The New York Times.
It comes to no surprise that reviews on Glassdoor, where current and former employees can review their place of employment, centre around the obscure funding. Two out of the three available reviews on the website highlight the “secret nature of funding” while one accuses the outlet of pushing stories onto their reporters with anonymous sources. These exclusive stories’ sources seem to be rather too secretive to their own journalists tasked at editing or publishing these articles.
MEE’s operating pattern aims at producing exclusive content that tends to be centred on attacking particular countries by using anonymous sources to capitalise on stereotypical views on the selected countries, from royal family dramas to weaponising the Palestinian cause by accusing Qatar’s enemies of doing secret deals with Israel. This clearly illustrates the Middle East Eyes’ purpose as a news outlet is not to report but to propagate a narrative in favour of Qatar in the West, where Al-Jazeera failed to penetrate effectively. In other words, MEE’s exclusive stories are exclusive in their creativity rather than their reliability to report facts. The outlet manufacturers exclusives to smear and push sentiments in their favour, illustrating the importance of media tools Qatar has in it’s diplomacy and foreign policy.
Middle East Eye is an instrument in media fragmentation to create an illusion of reliability and diverse sources of news for the Qatari narrative. Through their operating narrative, this media house tries to make the connections less obvious by obscuring its funds. MEE further claims that the mere reliance on Al Jazeera’s employment network is a random coincidence. Middle East Eye functions as an extension of Al Jazeera, which is an intricate way of diversifying one’s sources without having to be accused of being a state-owned outlet.
In recent years, the media machine has served as a vital tool in Qatar’s diplomacy, arguably their only tool other than cash incentives to its clients around the world. Diversification of Qatar’s outreach platforms is a new goal of the country’s media strategy, but there should be no room for them to hide their ownership or funding of media outlets, whether it be TV stations or online news outlets. David Hearst and others in the Middle East Eye play their role in the weaponisation of MEE’s stories through propagating fake news and masking them with anonymous sources that mislead human rights organisations and other news outlets. This media-propaganda tactic setts a scary tone for the future of media around the world that can only be answered through demands of transparency of financial and reporting sources as the first concrete step in fighting fake news before they reach colossal dimensions.
