Tariq Saleh

Tariq Saleh in Damascus in 2008.
Tariq Saleh
Born September 16, 1974
Nationality Brazilian
Occupation Reporter

Tariq Saleh (Beirut, 16 September 1974) is a Brazilian journalist and a BBC World Service correspondent in Beirut, covering the Middle East and Africa. He is best known for his coverage on international news, current affairs and documenting on conflicts, human rights and refugees for the BBC.

Since 2006, he has covered many major events in the region like the political and military conflicts in Lebanon, the 2011 Egyptian Revolution, the 2011 Libyan civil war, the 2011 Syrian uprising, the subsequent plight of the Syrian refugees in Turkey and the Syrian Civil War.

He is also a senior producer and head of the Global Desk at Transterra Media agency and a contributor to Terra Networks and Veja Online. Since 2013, he gives training to other journalists in basic Hostile Environment and First Aid (HEFAT) courses in Brazil and the Middle East.

Biography

Tariq Saleh was born in Beirut during the period his parents were working in Lebanon. He was raised in Sapiranga, a small town in the southern state of Rio Grande do Sul in Brazil, where his Palestinian grandfather immigrated to in the late 1950s.

Fluent in English, Arabic and Spanish, he graduated with a BA in journalism at Universidade do Vale do Rio dos Sinos (Unisinos), a university in southern Brazil. Between 1992 and 1993, he lived in the United Kingdom, returning to Brazil to finish his studies. In 2006 he moved to the Middle East to cover the region.

Career

Passion for journalism started when at the age of 14 years he watched Roland Joffé's The Killing Fields (1984). Before journalism he had studied civil engineering, however he was destined to become a reporter.

After studying photography he joined the journalism school at Unisinos university and his interests soon became politics, conflicts, human rights and social issues in the Middle East, Africa and Latin America regions.

He started as a reporter and photographer at his university news agency. A year later, his obsession for international coverage led him to become a world affairs reporter in the Brazilian newspaper Zero Hora of Porto Alegre, helping in the coverage of the Iraq War in 2003.

Tariq Saleh had reported from some countries in South America before moving to Lebanon in 2006 to cover the political turmoil in the country following the war between Hezbollah and Israel. In Beirut, he worked as a freelancer covering the political crisis in Lebanon. He joined the BBC in 2007 as a correspondent in Lebanon and later, in 2009, he became one of the broadcaster's Middle East correspondents.

Past work as a producer and writer include TIME magazine, leading broadcaster Rede Globo, TV Record, Folha de S.Paulo, among others, and a Middle East affairs consultant for Portuguese News Network (PNN) agency.

His reports, photographs and audio bulletins for the BBC World Service, notably BBC Brazil, are published in many newspapers and websites, and broadcast on TV and radio stations in Brazil and elsewhere.

Sources