Leila Fadel
Leila Fadel is a national correspondent for NPR based in Los Angeles, covering issues of culture, diversity, and race.
Most recently, she was NPR's international correspondent based in Cairo and covered the wave of revolts in the Middle East and their aftermaths in Libya, Tunisia, Egypt, and beyond. Her stories brought us to the heart of a state-ordered massacre of pro-Muslim Brotherhood protesters in Cairo in 2013 when police shot into crowds of people to clear them and killed between 1,000 and 2,000 people. She told us the tales of a coup in Egypt and what it is like for a country to go through a military overthrow of an elected government. She covered the fall of Mosul to ISIS in 2014 and documented the harrowing tales of the Yazidi women who were kidnapped and enslaved by the group. Her coverage also included stories of human smugglers in Egypt and the Syrian families desperate and willing to pay to risk their lives and cross a turbulent ocean for Europe.
She was awarded the Lowell Thomas Award from the Overseas Press Club for her coverage of the 2013 coup in Egypt and the toll it took on the country and Egyptian families. In 2017 she earned a Gracie award for the story of a single mother in Tunisia whose two eldest daughters were brainwashed and joined ISIS. The mother was fighting to make sure it didn't happen to her younger girls.
Before joining NPR, she covered the Middle East for The Washington Post as the Cairo Bureau Chief. Prior to her position as Cairo Bureau Chief for the Post, she covered the Iraq war for nearly five years with Knight Ridder, McClatchy Newspapers, and later the Washington Post. Her foreign coverage of the devastating human toll of the Iraq war earned her the George. R. Polk award in 2007. In 2016 she was the Council on Foreign Relations Edward R. Murrow fellow.
Leila Fadel is a Lebanese-American journalist who speaks conversational Arabic and was raised in Saudi Arabia and Lebanon.
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Jury selection is complete in the high-profile murder trial of former Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin. It took over two weeks to pick the jury. -
Asian Americans speak about their anger over the shootings in the Atlanta area that left six women of Asian descent dead.
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Put up to protect buildings from civil unrest, the boards have become vehicles of expression for devastated and angry Minnesotans.
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Leesa Kelly has collected more than 700 plywood boards from protests and boarded buildings from the summer of 2020. They represent preservation of the demonstrations as well as the trauma of it all.
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President Biden has signed an executive order to combat discrimination against LGBTQ people in health care, housing and education. The action is the most far-reaching of any federal protections yet.
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A South Los Angeles hospital has long provided for an underserved community where private insurance is scarce and chronic illnesses can flourish. And then came a devastating coronavirus surge.
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Members of the U.S. Capitol Police and D.C. police were overpowered by a violent mob storming the Capitol Building. There were also a few officers that appeared to sympathize with the mob.
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In Stockton, Calif., a controversial site is filling the gap as the local newspaper grapples to survive. Is this a microcosm of what happens to a democracy when local news dies?
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Protesters for Black lives say when they protest for social justice, they're met with rubber bullets and tear gas. Meanwhile, a mob of white extremists storms the Capitol with little resistance.
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Senate leadership rules out sending standalone $2,000 checks to U.S. workers. Arizona grapples with second highest COVID-19 rate in the nation. And, the Census Bureau will miss year-end deadline.
