Brian Whitaker

Brian Whitaker (sometimes credited as Brian Whittaker; born 13 June 1947) 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. 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. A former joint investigations editor of ''The Sunday Times'', he left the title at the time of the Wapping dispute. For a period during 1987, he was editor of the short-lived ''News on Sunday'' tabloid. 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.

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. Provided by Wikipedia