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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Election workers faced an unprecedented wave of threats in the last presidential election. What are poll workers and election clerks in the swing state of Michigan doing to keep voting secure? -
NPR's Leila Fadel talks to Ayman Safadi, Jordan's deputy prime minister and foreign affairs minister, about the risk of an all-out war in Lebanon. Jordan has ties to Israel, Lebanon and the U.S. -
In an interview with Morning Edition, Lebanese Foreign Minister Abdallah Bou Habib condemned the killing of civilians, saying only the U.S. can pressure Israel to prevent a wider Middle East war. -
Texas Democrat asks President Biden to drop out of the race to stop "an authoritarian strongman." -
Haiti’s interim PM talks about tackling his country’s challenges. -
A year ago, she packed what she could, helped her mother, who's in a wheelchair, into the car and drove all night to find a haven. In the U.S. to accept an award, she talks about her country's crisis. -
The British journalist picked to be the Washington Post's new editor says he won't take the job after all, following controversy around his involvement in ethically questionable journalism practices.
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NPR's Leila Fadel speaks with outgoing NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg about his decade in office and the challenges faced by the North Atlantic alliance. -
Banning smartphones in schools is one of those rare policies that Republicans and Democrats seem to agree on but it hasn’t always been a popular idea — so what’s changed?
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If you buy a plane ticket or a car rental, you might get asked if you want to buy carbon offsets to reduce climate pollution. Is there any way to know if those carbon offsets are legit?
