Ghida Fakhry

Ghida Fakhry (Arabic: غيدا فخري), also known as Ghida Fakhry Khane, is a Lebanese broadcast journalist who has been one of the primary broadcasters for the news channel Al Jazeera English since its launch. She has also been the host of Witness, the award-winning documentary program.^[2] She is currently based at the channel's main broadcast-center, in Doha in Qatar.

Early life and education

Fakhry was born in Beirut, Lebanon,^[3] where she lived till the age of six. To escape from the Lebanese civil war (1975–1990), her parents sent her to study at the Swiss boarding school Le Rosey. She completed her undergraduate education at the Richmond University, London and got a Master's degree in Near and Middle Eastern Studies from the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) at the 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 speaks conversational Spanish.^[4]

Career

At the launch of Al Jazeera English in April 2006, Fakhry was appointed Lead Female Anchor for the Americas Broadcast Centre at Washington D.C.^[4] She co-anchored with Dave Marash (replaced in 2008 by Shihab Rattansi) Washington, D.C. broadcasts of Al Jazeera English language television news program (Al-Jazeera English TV news broadcasts daily from four separate news bureaus in Doha, Washington, D.C., London, and Kuala Lumpur). Later on, she anchored solo Washington D.C. newscasts. On 4–5 November, Ghida Fakhry and David Foster co-anchored a 12 hour-long continuous coverage of the 2008 US presidential elections. She announced at 11 p.m. local time that Barack Obama was the projected 44th President of the United States of America.^{[citation needed]}

Fakhry has interviewed several Middle-Eastern leaders, including Colonel Muammar Gaddafi of Libya, President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, Shimon Peres, President of Israel and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, President of Iran. She has also interviewed Palestinian President Yasser Arafat and UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan. In December 2006, she conducted a special program on Kofi Annan's term as Secretary General, titled Kofi Annan: Ten Years at the Top.^[2]

Ghida Fakhry moderated UN-related events. In January 2008, she moderated the First Plenary Session of the First Forum of the Alliance of Civilizations hosted by the Government of Spain in Madrid.^[5] The panel, which sought to specify the true nature of the divisions that foment extremism and polarization between communities, included the Prime Minister of Malaysia, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, the President of Slovenia, Danilo Türk, Javier Solana, High Representative of the EU for Foreign Policy, and Mr. Ali Babacan, Minister of Foreign Affairs of Turkey.^[5] A year later, she moderated the Market Place of Idea's at the Second Forum of the Alliance hosted by Turkey in Istanbul.^[6]

Earlier, Ghida Fakhry was New York Bureau Chief and Columnist^[7] 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,^[8] and the Secretary of State, Colin Powell,^[9] 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.^[4]

Fakhry worked for the Al Jazeera Channel (Arabic language service) as its New York 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 guest on major US networks and appeared on PBS's Charlie Rose, ABC's Nightline with Ted Koppel (with Ambassador Richard Holbrooke), with regular appearances on CNN's Diplomatic License with Richard Roth. Earlier in her career, she was New York Correspondent of Abu Dhabi Television.^[2] She began her journalistic career in the mid-1990s as a political reporter for the London-published Arabic language newspaper Asharq al-Awsat.

In October 2007, Esquire Magazine voted Ghida Fakhry as one of four US-based news anchors in its annual "Women We Love" ranking.^[10] 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.^[11]

External links

• Al Jazeera English, About Us - News Presenters

References