Al-Masdar News is an online newspaper founded by Leith Abou Fadel. Al-Masdar is Arabic for "the source". Al-Masdars coverage focuses largely on conflict zones in the Middle East: Syria, Yemen, and Iraq. Al-Masdar has been described as being favorable to President Bashar al-Assad.
Background
Al-Masdar News was launched in August 2014 as a media service that provides frontline news and analysis from the Middle East.
Position
The website was described by the BBC and Newsweek as having a pro-Syrian government viewpoint, while The Independent describes it as "sympathetic to the Syrian regime". The New York Times has described it as a "pro-government website". Leonid Bertshidsky writing in Bloomberg News, also calls Al-Masdar "somewhat pro-Assad." The National Interest describes it as "pro-Assad". The Jerusalem Post describes it as "generally supportive of the Syrian regime". The New Statesman calls it a "regime-supporting outlet". Russian outlet Sputnik calls it "pro-Syrian".
Criticism
Following the April 2017 Khan Shaykhun chemical attack in the Idlib Governorate, al-Masdar News published an opinion article by deputy editor Paul Antonopoulos entitled "Jumping to conclusions; something is not adding up in Idlib chemical weapons attack". A report by the Atlantic Council's Digital Forensic Research Lab published three days later described a "digital forensics" trail which showed how this Al-Masdar opinion article was used as a source by conspiracy, pro-Russian and far-right websites, in particular InfoWars, which recycled Antonopoulos' article in a piece by Mimi al Laham. It described Al-Masdar News as "an unofficial government outlet" and said that it had "repeatedly attacked regime critics and witnesses to regime atrocities, notably the White Helmets." Business Insider showed the conclusions in the AMN article differing markedly from those of other analysts, specifically Fred Hof, US defense officials, President Donald Trump and Dr. Monzer Khalil. After deputy editor Paul Antonopoulos was shown to be active on the neo-Nazi site Stormfront, he was forced to resign from Al-Masdar on 28 April 2017. Al-Masdar issued a statement on behalf of its board of directors, saying they found his behaviour "wholly unacceptable" and strongly condemned it, while also apologizing to its readers and all those offended by his actions. Business Insider reporter Natasha Bertrand has described Leith Abou Fadel, the editor of Al-Masdar, as someone who had pushed a conspiracy theory in the past, and described him as an "Assad loyalist". The New York Times also accused Fadel of spreading unfounded misinformation about a victim of the Petra László incident. A 2018 report by the Alliance for Securing Democracy, based on analysis of its "Hamilton 68" database of Russian disinformation Twitter accounts, showed that Al-Masdar is a main source of Syria-related propaganda for Russian accounts aimed at US audiences.
