Abbie Cheeseman is a freelance foreign correspondent with a focus on Middle East accountability, national security and human rights investigations. She has been based in Beirut for the past six years.

She is currently in a Middle East breaking news position for the Washington Post, covering events unfolding across the region in the overnight and early hours for the U.S., as well as longer-term projects on the ground in Lebanon.

The recipient of the 2024 Stern-Bryan fellowship at the Post, she spent three months travelling across the United States covering the presidential election that brought Donald Trump back to office.

Over the past six years she has covered all of the major twists and turns of the Middle East’s regional politics and conflicts, but has most closely followed Lebanon’s cascading crises and the war between Israel and Hezbollah.

Her background is in investigative journalism, particularly surrounding Western covert military actions and air campaigns in the Middle East and Afghanistan. In 2022 she was part of the New York Times team that won the Pulitzer Prize for International Journalism for The Civilian Casualty Files, led by Azmat Khan.

She started her career at Airwars and The Bureau of Investigative Journalism while completing her Masters degree in Interactive Journalism at City, University of London.

Her Middle East analysis is regularly seen and heard across live TV and radio in the UK and U.S.