Ghida Fakhry

Ghida Fakhry is a British/Lebanese broadcast journalist who was a lead anchor for the global news channel Al Jazeera English at its launch in Washington DC, and was later one of the primary anchors at the network's headquarters in Doha. She was also the host of Witness, the award-winning documentary program.^[1] She is currently based in New York City.

Early life and education

Ghida Fakhry was born in Beirut, Lebanon where she lived until the age of six. She moved to Europe at the start of the Lebanese civil war and pursued a bilingual education leading up to a French baccalaureate degree. She later completed her undergraduate studies in London and received a Master's degree in Near and Middle Eastern Studies from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, and a Master of Arts in International Relations from the Boston University European Programme. She is fluent in English, Arabic and French and is conversational in Spanish.^[2]

Career

Ghida Fakhry is an international broadcast journalist with more than 20 years of experience in television broadcasts and print journalism as lead news anchor, UN/ diplomatic and political affairs correspondent, columnist, and bureau chief for multiple international news organisations. More recently, she was Senior News and Programmes Presenter for Aljazeera English. In her different roles Ghida Fakhry conducted in-depth interviews with Heads of State and Government, including Yasser Arafat, Shimon Peres, Hamid Karzai, Evo Morales, Pervez Musharraf, Hamid Karzai, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Muammar Gaddafi, Kofi Annan, and Antonio Guterres among others.

Ghida Fakhry is currently based in New York City and is a regular Moderator and Chair for high-level panels and debates at major international/UN conferences with leading policy-makers and international experts with a focus on global current affairs, peace and security, human rights, women's empowerment, renewable energy and sustainable development. In April 2016 she moderated the opening ceremony of the UN's sustainable development goals at the General Assembly in New York and served as moderator for the UN's Human Rights Day in Geneva (December 2013), and the World Summit of Nobel Peace Prize Laureates in Warsaw (October 2013) as well as the Renewable Energy Conference for COP21 in Paris (December 2015), the World Telecommunication Symposium in Hiroshima (November 2015) and the Global Meeting on Ending Violence against Women in Istanbul (December 2015).

Ghida Fakhry joined Aljazeera English at its launch in 2006, taking on the role of Lead Female Anchor in the network's Washington DC broadcast center, before moving to its Doha headquarters in 2010, where she was a Senior News and Programmes Presenter. As one of the network's primary news anchors, Ghida presented the primetime program “Newshour” as well as the current affairs programme "Inside Story". She hosted the award-winning documentary program “Witness" and was a regular contributor to the flagship interview program “Talk to Aljazeera”. She also co-anchored AJE's special US election coverage in 2008, announcing at 11 p.m. local time that Barack Obama was the projected 44th President of the United States of America.

Earlier, Ghida Fakhry was New York Bureau Chief and Columnist^[3] for the London-based Arabic language daily Asharq Al-Awsat. From 2002-2004, she anchored the flagship evening newscast of the Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation-Al Hayat from London. During that time, Fakhry conducted exclusive in-depth interviews in Washington D.C. with U.S. Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld,^[4] and the Secretary of State, Colin Powell,^[5] as well as several other senior State Department and Pentagon officials. She reported on location from Baghdad and Kabul in the summer of 2003 while travelling with Rumsfeld during his first trip to Iraq after the US-led invasion and covered his visit to the Abu Ghraib prison.^[2]

Ghida Fakhry worked for the Al Jazeera Channel (Arabic language service) as its New York City Bureau Chief from 2000 to late 2001. During this time, she covered the attacks of September 11 and their aftermath, reporting from Ground Zero on the rescue and relief operations. She was a frequent guest on major U.S. networks and appeared on PBS's Charlie Rose, ABC's Nightline, with regular appearances on CNN's Diplomatic License and MSNBC. Her op-eds have been published in The Financial Times, The International Herald Tribune, and The Huffington Post. Earlier in her career, she was New York Correspondent of Abu Dhabi Television.^[1] Ghida Fakhry was also a CNN and World Report contributor. She began her journalistic career in the mid-1990s as a political reporter for the London-published Arabic language newspaper Asharq al-Awsat.

In 2013 Ghida Fakhry was listed among the 500 most influential Arab personalities in the Arabian Business Power 500. In October 2007, Esquire Magazine voted Ghida Fakhry as one of four U.S.-based news anchors in its annual "Women We Love" ranking.^[6] According to LAU Magazine "Fakhry is one of the best-known Arab news personalities outside of the Arab world". On 13 December 2006, the US channel Comedy Central had a piece on Al Jazeera on the Daily Show with Jon Stewart in which Ghida Fakhry was renamed 'Peppermint Gomez' to appeal to American audiences.^[7]

External links to features, interviews and published pieces

• US Elections & the Middle East: Watching and Waiting. And Praying. - The Huffington Post

• The Huffington Post

• Al Jazeera English, News Presenters

• The New York Times, Public Lives

• The New York Times, The Opinion Pages

• Yale Global - Originally published in The Financial Times

• Forbes

• Real Clear Politics - Originally published in The Sunday Times

• Association for International Broadcasting

• Bidoun

• Newsweek

• Arabian Business Power 500

• Ethiomedia

References