Contrary to claims we sometimes see on X, the Financial Times (FT) is not owned or directly funded by “Arab money”. Its owner, since 2015, is the Japanese media company, Nikkei. While examining the FT’s revenue sources, however, which consist of subscription fees and adverts, we did notice that they have a financial relationship with Qatar in the form of a dedicated url promoting investment in the country.
This paid partnership with an authoritarian regime, which dates back to 2022, is no doubt is lucrative for the London-based outlet.
If you happen to click on the question mark next “Partner Content”, you’re told that “This advertisement has been produced by the commercial department of the Financial Times on behalf of Invest Qatar“. Invest Qatar, also known as the Investment Promotion Agency Qatar, was established by the country’s Ministry of Commerce and Industry in 2019, and has been framed by MEMRI as part of a broader strategy by the Gulf state to “neutralize criticism of its authoritarian rule and [role as] financial sponsor of terrorism” and project an image of “innovation“.
Invest Qatar has a promotional (propaganda) video on YouTube which, they acknowledge, was “developed in partnership with the Financial Times“.
Moreover, those who’ve been reading the FT’s reporting on Israel, particularly since the Oct. 7th massacre, could certainly be forgiven for wondering if its coverage has been compromised by a relationship with the government that’s a long-standing backer of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB), and Hamas, the Palestinian offshoot of the MB, and which has one of the worst records on press freedom.
While we recently posted about the FT’s three cheers for the Qatari state-controlled Al Jazeera, a recent report (“Israel unbound: was Qatar a strike too far?“, Sept. 10), by their Middle East editor Andrew England and Neri Zilber, goes even further in casting Doha as the victim of Israeli aggression.
In the opening, when describing the scene around the IDF’s (seemingly unsuccessful) attempt to kill Hamas leaders meeting in a Doha office, readers are told that Israel struck the building, “as children in the upscale neighbourhood of embassies, hotels and malls enjoyed their after-school activities“, while failing to note that there weren’t any claims, even by Hamas or Qatar, that civilians were killed in the blast.
Then, for context about recent events, the FT writes that “since Hamas’s October 7 2023 attack and the outbreak of a multifront regional war, Israel has used its superior air power to launch strikes on Lebanon, Iran, Syria, Yemen, Gaza and the occupied West Bank“, while failing to accurately frame the “outbreak” of war as having been initiated by terror groups and state actors in Lebanon, Iran, Syria, Yemen and Gaza.
Later in the piece, the journalists reinforce this ‘Israel is attacking Middle East countries’ narrative, when they write that the attack on Hamas leadership in Doha “makes it the sixth Middle East capital to be hit by Israeli missiles this year“, without the crucial context that Israel has been in a seven front war – one not of its choosing – for much of the last twenty-three months. The fact that, for instance, to this day, hundreds of thousands of Israelis are still often forced to run to bomb shelters, typically due to warnings of Houthi ballistic missile or drone attacks, is something that the Tel Aviv-based Zilber would surely know, but which is, quite tellingly, omitted from the piece.
The target of this latest Israeli attack, however, England and Zilber aver, was on a “major non-Nato all[y], a state that not only hosts the biggest American military base in the region but has been integral to months of tortuous US-backed efforts to secure a ceasefire in Gaza and the release of Israeli hostages“, a characterisation of the Hamas-sponsoring state that could have been published at Al Jazeera. “Shockwaves”, they add, were felt “across oil-rich Gulf nations” from this latest example of what the FT referred to in its own voice as Israel’s “unchecked belligerence” – a flagrant example of editorialising in a putatively straight news story.
The FT journalists are so insistent on whitewashing Qatari’s malevolence that, towards the end of the piece, they uncritically cite Doha’s statement that the “strike [was] an act of ‘state terrorism’, without noting the country’s own well-documented record of supporting Islamist terrorists.
Finally, we generally believe that ideology and group-think drive anti-Israel media bias more than any other factors. Further, as our focus is almost always on the biased content itself, rather than the motivation of the bias, we’ll continue to hold the Financial Times accountable for their ubiquitously misleading coverage of the region,
However, while the “follow the money” aphorism is normally far too simple an explanation when analysing institutional bias of any kind, the FT’s financial relationship with Qatar raises some serious questions in the context of their coverage of Qatar, and their increasing slouch towards anti-Israel advocacy.
