The paper specialised in investigative journalism and stories the more mainstream media would not cover.
[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.