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Outlet profile

The Diplomat

Asia-Pacific focused, centrist/analytical

Owned byTrans-Asia Inc., a Tokyo-based international translation and publishing company (also linked to Japan's MHT Corporation)
FundingAdvertising and reader subscriptions; relies heavily on outside academics, journalists, and policy analysts as contributors rather than a large in-house staff
On the administrationmixed

Background

The Diplomat was founded in Australia in 2001-2002 by Minh Bui Jones, David Llewellyn-Smith, and Sung Lee as a bi-monthly print current-affairs magazine. Financial pressures forced it to drop print and relaunch as an online-only publication around 2009, roughly coinciding with the collapse of the Far Eastern Economic Review, a gap it sought to fill in English-language Asia-Pacific analysis. Operations later shifted base to Tokyo under Trans-Asia Inc., with an editorial presence also in Washington, D.C. The outlet built its reputation on contributor-driven analysis—academics, regional journalists, and former officials—covering security, diplomacy, trade, and domestic politics across Asia and the Pacific. It is not aligned with any government or party and is typically rated as low-bias and highly factual by outside media-bias evaluators, though it is primarily a specialist foreign-policy publication rather than a general-interest U.S. news outlet, so it carries less domestic U.S. political baggage than mainstream American media.

Sources

  1. The Diplomat (magazine) - Wikipedia
  2. The Diplomat Magazine - Bias and Credibility - Media Bias/Fact Check
  3. Commerce Disclosure - The Diplomat
  4. An Interview with The Diplomat's Publisher James Pach
  5. The Diplomat Magazine - Bias and Reliability - Biasly

Profile compiled 2026-10-02; refreshed when ownership, funding, or the administration changes.

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