Who owns this publication, who pays for it, and what that money buys. A reader is entitled to all three before deciding what our reporting is worth to them.
Ownership
The Beirut Journal is privately and independently owned by its founder. It has no outside shareholders and no investors. No political party, political movement, candidate for office, government body, foreign state or state-linked entity holds any stake in it, directly or indirectly, and none has any say in what it publishes or does not publish.
Funding
The Journal is funded by its founder. It carries no advertising. It runs no sponsored articles and no commercial features of any kind. It takes no grants from governments, embassies, political organisations or their foundations.
What money cannot buy here
Our news pages are not for sale. There is no rate card, no paid placement, no promoted slot, and no arrangement under which a person or a company can pay to appear in our coverage or to be left out of it. This has been true since the first day we published and is the commitment we would most want to be caught breaking.
If anyone ever offers you coverage in The Beirut Journal in exchange for payment, they are not acting for us. Please tell us at editor@thebeirutjournal.com.
Why the owner is not named
The Journal’s owner is not named on this page. That is a deliberate choice, and we would rather state it plainly than let a reader assume the question was never asked.
We accept what it costs us. A reader who cannot see who owns a paper is being asked to take more on trust than we would like, and that is a fair objection to raise against us. What we can offer in its place is the list above — an explicit statement of who does not own us and who does not pay for us — together with standards we can be held to and a corrections policy that puts our mistakes on the same page as the error.
Editorial independence
No owner, funder or commercial party sees an article before it is published, and none has ever asked to. Editorial decisions are made by the editor alone.
Our relationship with other outlets
A large part of what we publish follows a story first reported by another Lebanese outlet. Where that is the case we say so in the article and link to the original. We have no financial relationship with any of the outlets we cite, and no arrangement — paid or reciprocal — governs which of them we follow.
Questions
Anything on this page can be challenged. Write to editor@thebeirutjournal.com and we will answer.