In November 2025, Isaac Chotiner of The New Yorker posted on X about a piece in the news startup Semafor on Saudi Arabia he found so credulous that, he couldn’t help thinking, it raised questions about who funds Semafor Gulf—the publication’s Persian Gulf–focused vertical. Ben Smith, Semafor’s editor in chief, pushed back: The funding was no secret. Do your homework.
On Monday, Semafor published a Q&A with Badr Jafar, one of its own investors and the special envoy of the United Arab Emirates’ minister of foreign affairs for business and philanthropy. The headline: “Why the world can’t afford to lose the U.A.E. model.” The piece discloses Jafar’s connection to the publication, but it read like a press release anyway.
The same day, Jafar had an op-ed in the global-affairs and lifestyle magazine Monocle arguing that Iran’s attacks on the U.A.E. have revealed a nation “whose resilience is built on diversity.” The piece, which describes the U.A.E. as “the most consequential experiment of our time,” was promoted on X by Noura Al Kaabi, the U.A.E.’s minister of state for foreign affairs. Smith reposted her.
None of this is hidden: Jafar is a Semafor investor who writes for the publication, a U.A.E. envoy who writes for Monocle—and the beneficiary of U.A.E. government promotion that Semafor’s own editor in chief is amplifying.
Chotiner’s original question was who funds Semafor Gulf. Smith said the answer was easily findable. He was right.
—HM
