Leila Fadel


Leila Fadel is a Lebanese American journalist who was the Cairo bureau chief for National Public Radio.

Background

Fadel grew up in Lebanon and Saudi Arabia. She was a Jack Shaheen Mass Communications scholar and graduated from Northeastern University in 2004.

Career

In 2004, Fadel began her career in journalism at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram as a crime and higher education reporter. She began covering the Iraq War in 2005 for Knight Ridder. By early 2006, she had completed two postings in Baghdad, Iraq. Then, she returned to Baghdad for McClatchy. She also covered the 2006 Lebanon War. She continued in Baghdad for McClatchy through 2009, where she contributed to McClatchy's Baghdad Observer.
In 2010, she joined the Washington Post Middle East team. On February 2, 2011, Fadel and photographer Linda Davidson were among some two dozen journalists arrested by the Egyptian Interior Ministry. The next day, Fadel and Davidson were released, but placed under house arrest at a hotel. Two local Post employees remained in custody, interpreter Sufian Taha and driver Mansour el-Sayed Mohammed Abo Gouda; according to Fadel, Abo Gouda was beaten.
She covered the Arab Spring and its aftermaths in Libya, Tunisia, Egypt, and Syria for the Washington Post. In July 2012, Fadel was hired by NPR as Cairo bureau chief and covered the aftermath of the Arab Spring.

Personal

Fadel speaks conversational Arabic.
In 2006, she stated:
My goal is to find the missing voices, the ones I heard on the streets of Beirut and Saudi Arabia but which were often missing in American media... Great journalism is the ability to capture moments in time, weave them together, and tell the story of all people without condescension, without judgment and without an agenda.

Awards