Brian Whitaker (sometimes credited as Brian Whittaker; born 13 June 1947) [1] is a British journalist and writer.
Whitaker earned a degree in Arabic studies at the University of Westminster and Latin (BA Hons) at the University of Birmingham. He started work as a graduate journalist with the Liverpool Echo in 1968. [2] During his time in Liverpool, he set up the Liverpool Free Press in 1971 with four other Echo journalists. The paper specialised in investigative journalism and stories the more mainstream media would not cover. The paper's investigative work led to a former council leader and former council architect being jailed for corruption over their involvement in the building of a dry ski slope in Kirkby. [3] A former joint investigations editor of The Sunday Times , he left the title at the time of the Wapping dispute. [4] For a period during 1987, he was editor of the short-lived News on Sunday tabloid. [5] The newspaper published extracts from Spycatcher by Peter Wright in August 1987 while Whitaker was editor. The title was eventually fined £50,000 in May 1989 for contempt of court in breaking an injunction upheld by the Law Lords shortly before publication. [6] [7] [8]
Whitaker worked for the British newspaper The Guardian from 1987 and was its Middle East editor from 2000 to 2007. He runs a personal, non-Guardian-related website, Al-Bab.com, about politics in the Arab world.
The Times is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register, adopting its modern name on 1 January 1788. The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times, are published by Times Media, since 1981 a subsidiary of News UK, in turn wholly owned by News Corp. The Times and The Sunday Times, which do not share editorial staff, were founded independently and have had common ownership only since 1966. In general, the political position of The Times is considered to be centre-right.
The history of British newspapers begins in the 17th century with the emergence of regular publications covering news and gossip. The relaxation of government censorship in the late 17th century led to a rise in publications, which in turn led to an increase in regulation throughout the 18th century. The Times began publication in 1785 and became the leading newspaper of the early 19th century, before the lifting of taxes on newspapers and technological innovations led to a boom in newspaper publishing in the late 19th century. Mass education and increasing affluence led to new papers such as the Daily Mail emerging at the end of the 19th century, aimed at lower middle-class readers.
Fleet Street is a street in Central London, England. It runs west to east from Temple Bar at the boundary of the Cities of London and Westminster to Ludgate Circus at the site of the London Wall and the River Fleet from which the street was named.
The Daily Star is a tabloid newspaper published from Monday to Saturday in the United Kingdom since 1978. In 2002, a sister Sunday edition, Daily Star Sunday was launched with a separate staff. In 2009, the Daily Star published its 10,000th issue. Jon Clark is the editor-in-chief of the paper, while Andrew Gilpin is editor of the web version.
The Liverpool Echo is a newspaper published by Trinity Mirror North West & North Wales – a subsidiary company of Reach plc and is based in St. Paul's Square, Liverpool, England. It is published Monday through Sunday, and is Liverpool's daily newspaper. Until January 13, 2012, it had a sister morning paper, the Liverpool Daily Post. Between July and December 2022, it had an average daily circulation of 15,395.
Sir Harold Matthew "Harry" Evans was a British-American journalist and writer. In his career in his native Britain, he was editor of The Sunday Times from 1967 to 1981, and its sister title The Times for a year from 1981, before being forced out of the latter post by Rupert Murdoch. While at The Sunday Times, he led the newspaper's campaign to seek compensation for mothers who had taken the morning sickness drug thalidomide, which led to their children having severely deformed limbs.
Al-Ahram, founded on 5 August 1876, is the most widely circulating Egyptian daily newspaper, and the second oldest after Al-Waqa'i' al-Misriyya. It is majority owned by the Egyptian government, and is considered a newspaper of record for Egypt.
Yigal Carmon is the president and cofounder of the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), an organization which monitors and translates Arabic and Persian publications; radio and TV broadcasts; and religious sermons into many languages and circulates them over the Internet.
The Nasrid dynasty was an Arab dynasty that ruled the Emirate of Granada from 1232 to 1492. It was the last Muslim dynasty in the Iberian Peninsula. Twenty-three sultans ruled Granada from the founding of the dynasty in 1232 by Muhammad I until 2 January 1492, when Muhammad XII surrendered all lands to Isabella I of Castile. Today, the most visible evidence of the Nasrid dynasty is the Alhambra palace complex built under their reign.
William Harry is the creator of Mersey Beat, a newspaper of the early 1960s which focused on the Liverpool music scene. Harry had previously started various magazines and newspapers, such as Biped and Premier, while at Liverpool's Junior School of Art. He later attended the Liverpool College of Art, where his fellow students included John Lennon and Stuart Sutcliffe, who both later performed with the Beatles. He published a magazine, Jazz, in 1958, and worked as an assistant editor on the University of Liverpool's charity magazine, Pantosphinx.
Abdel Bari Atwan is a Palestinian-born British journalist and the editor-in-chief of Rai al-Youm, an Arab world digital news and opinion website. Previously he was the editor-in-chief of the London-based pan-Arab newspaper Al-Quds Al-Arabi from the founding of the paper in 1989 until July 2013.
The Palestinian Arab Party was a political party in Palestine established in May 1935 by the influential Husayni family. Jamal al-Husayni was the founder and chairman. Emil Ghuri was elected general secretary until the end of the British Mandate in 1948. Other leaders of the party included Saed al-dean Al-Aref, Rafiq al-Tamimi, Tawfiq al-Husayni, Anwar al-Khatib, Kamil al-Dajani, and Yusuf Sahyun.
The Northern Echo is a regional daily morning newspaper based in the town of Darlington in North East England, serving mainly southern County Durham and northern Yorkshire. The paper covers national as well as regional news. In 2007, its then-editor claimed that it was one of the most famous provincial newspapers in the United Kingdom. Its first edition was published on 1 January 1870.
Mai Ghoussoub was a Lebanese writer, artist, publisher and human rights activist. She was the co-founder in London of the Saqi bookshop and publishing house.
The Sun is a British tabloid newspaper, published by the News Group Newspapers division of News UK, itself a wholly owned subsidiary of Lachlan Murdoch's News Corp. It was founded as a broadsheet in 1964 as a successor to the Daily Herald, and became a tabloid in 1969 after it was purchased by its current owner. The Sun had the largest daily newspaper circulation in the United Kingdom, but was overtaken by freesheet rival Metro in March 2018.
Abbas Shiblak is a Palestinian academic, historian, Research Associate at the Refugee Studies Centre (RSC), University of Oxford, free-lance writer, former diplomat and an advocate of human rights.
Nazik Saba Yared is a Lebanese novelist and academic, a former professor, and a writer. She is the daughter of Alexander and Hala (Maalouf) Saba. She was married to the late Ibrahim Yared and has three children and four grandchildren.
Anthony John Bevins was an English journalist, sometimes known as Tony Bevins.
Afira bint 'Abbad was an Arab poet from around the 3rd century CE, from what is now Bahrain.
Liverpool Free Press was an independent newspaper printed in Liverpool, England, between 1971 and 1977 that specialised in investigative journalism.