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Washington DC Broadcast Center
Led by the former editor-in-chief of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Tony Burman, and with over 150 staff located in North America alone, including experienced veterans of CNN, NBC, NPR, CBC, BBC, Al Jazeera English has been dedicated since day one to providing unique in-depth reporting on North America for a global audience. Al Jazeera English’s Washington DC broadcast center serves as the hub for coverage of events in the Americas and Caribbean, operating one of the channel’s four broadcast centers.
Below you will find some more information about some of Al Jazeera English’s management as well as our North American-based presenters and correspondents:
Tony Burman: Managing Director
Tony Burman brings with him a distinguished international reputation as an experienced journalist and broadcast executive.
Until recently, he was editor-in-chief and executive director of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC News) and has been an award-winning news and documentary producer with field experience in more than 30 countries and several continents, including the Middle East, Africa, Europe and Latin America.
Mr Burman, while head of CBC’s news and current affairs operations, the largest news organization in Canada, implemented the successful integration of CBC’s radio, TV and online operations.
During his experience, which spans more than three decades, Tony has received more than 100 awards for programming and network achievements in Canada, the US, the UK, France, Monte Carlo and Argentina.
Will Stebbins: Bureau Chief, Washington DC
Will Stebbins joined the channel from Associated Press Television News (APTN) where he was Regional Editor, overseeing the management of all of APTN’s Latin American news.
Will is multi-lingual and brings to a wealth of broadcast experience from his previous roles as Regional Executive, APTN, Miami, Senior Producer, APTN, Havana, and Bureau Chief, Worldwide Television News, Cairo.
Ghida Fakhry
Ghida Fakhry, a Washington DC-based presenter for Al Jazeera English, has more than 10 years of political journalism experience in both television and print media.
Since joining Al Jazeera English, Ghida has interviewed numerous key international figures including Shimon Peres, the Israeli president, Evo Morales, the Bolivian president and Hans Blix, the former head of the UN weapons inspection team in Iraq.
Prior to joining Al Jazeera English, Ghida was the New York bureau chief of the pan-Arab daily Al-sharq Al-Awsat.
From 2002 to 2004, she was lead presenter for the Lebanese Broadcasting Corporation-Al Hayat joint venture’s Evening News.
In addition to covering the events leading up to the invasion of Iraq in March 2003 from LBC’s headquarters in Beirut, Ghida has conducted exclusive in-depth interviews with US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of State Colin Powell, and the late Palestinian leader, Yasser Arafat.
Ghida has also worked for Al Jazeera Arabic as its New York Bureau Chief from 2000 to late 2001.
Josh Rushing
Josh Rushing a 14-year veteran of the United States Marine Corps who held the ranks private through to captain, gained prominence in the major motion picture documentary Control Room, which features his struggles as the United States military’s lead spokesperson to the Arab world during the invasion of Iraq.
Based in North American, Josh covers some of the world’s most controversial and complex regions. For his recent series, On War, Josh traveled from the bomb-ridden Laos countryside to the jungles of Peru to the bustling center of an arms sale in Jordan to present the personal stories of the individuals caught in the middle of conflicts.
Josh’s outspoken and conscientious nature in this sensitive role – his conflicts with the Pentagon and his subsequent resignation from the Marines – as well his regular appearances as a fresh, non-partisan, critical voice in broadcast and print media have made him among the most recognizable young media voices in America today.
Josh is also currently co-hosting Fault Lines, our US-based current affairs program, which opens a window to the stories that have been neglected by mainstream news, but still have much to teach us about the way the world works today.
Rob Reynolds
Rob Reynolds, Al Jazeera English’s senior Washington correspondent, has more than 25 years experience in international television journalism. He has reported from over 30 countries, and from war zones including Iraq, Kuwait, Bosnia, Somalia, Ethiopia, Russia and Haiti.
Rob joined Al Jazeera at its inception and has extensively covered US politics and policymaking, including the White House, Congress, and Supreme Court. As the 2008 American presidential campaign has unfolded, Rob has followed developments, from the snowy fields of Iowa all the way to the Democratic and Republican Party political conventions this summer and beyond.
As the senior correspondent in North America, Rob has travelled widely and reported on a diverse range of subjects, from the exploitation of Haitian sugar-cane workers in the Dominican Republic, to the lingering health effects of Cold War-era uranium mining among the Navajo native people in the American southwest, to the controversy surrounding the US detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. He has reported from locations as diverse as Alaska, Venezuela, Montana, Mexico and British Columbia. Rob recently conducted an exclusive in-depth interview with US Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Mike Mullen.
Before joining AJE, Rob covered the 2000 and 2008 US Presidential elections for CNBC. He was Moscow correspondent for NBC News during the turbulent Yeltsin years. He covered the first Gulf war and the war in Chechnya for CNN.
Rob has received an Emmy Award and a Robert F Kennedy Memorial Journalism Award for his reporting.
Kimberly Halkett
Award-winning journalist Kimberly Halkett joined Al Jazeera English as a Washington-based correspondent from Global National where she was a correspondent for Canada’s Global Television’s flagship evening news.
As a reporter for the Canadian network, Kimberly covered a range of news stories including the 2004 US presidential election and the aftermath of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita.
Prior to that, Kimberly lived and worked in Washington DC, as a correspondent for the Fox network program, America’s Most Wanted, travelling throughout the US and Canada and using her investigative reporting skills to put together reports on some of North America’s most dangerous felons.
Her determined reporting assisted in putting some of the region’s most dangerous criminals behind bars.
Anand Naidoo
Anand Naidoo joined Al Jazeera English after 10 years as an anchor for CNN International’s World News. During this time, Anand reported from the Middle East, South Africa and Europe.
Before joining CNN in 1997, Anand was the principal evening news anchor for the South African Broadcasting Corporation in Johannesburg. He began his broadcast career in Belgium, where he worked as a field producer for Belgian television as well as a producer and anchor for the Belgian Radio World Service. In those positions, he travelled widely as a producer and reporter in Western Europe, the former Soviet bloc states and the Middle East.
Anand has also worked as a news editor on Radio 702, a Johannesburg independent radio station and as a presenter on the South African cable station, M-Net.
He began his career as a newspaper journalist on the Johannesburg Rand Daily Mail.
Among the major stories Anand has covered during his career was the release of Nelson Mandela and the first all-race elections in South Africa in 1994. He has also anchored breaking news coverage on the bomb blasts at the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, the North Korean missile tests, the Nato Air Campaign in Yugoslavia and the Bosnian war and the second Gulf war in Iraq.
Anand is the recipient of several prestigious journalism awards, including the George Peabody award for coverage of Hurricane Katrina and the Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award for coverage of the Tsunami disaster in South East Asia.
Riz Khan
Riz Khan is a recognized face worldwide following extensive careers with the BBC and CNN prior to joining Al Jazeera. He currently hosts two programs on Al Jazeera English: The Riz Khan Show and One on One.
He was a presenter and reporter at the BBC for eight years and was the first mainstream Asian newsreader for their international network. He hosted the news bulletin that launched BBC World Service Television News in 1991.
After presenting there for two years he was poached by CNN for their own international channel where he became a senior anchor for the network’s global news shows and special events including the historic live coverage of the Hajj.
In 1996 he launched his interactive interview show on CNN: Q&A with Riz Khan and he has conducted thousands of interviews with guests including the UN Secretary General Kofi Annan, Former US Presidents Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton, the Dalai Lama and Nelson Mandela, to name a few.
Born in 1962 in South Yemen, Riz and his family moved to London when he was four. He attended the University of Wales where he gained an honors degree in Medical Physiology.
Kristen Saloomey
New York based correspondent Kristen Saloomey has 15 years of news reporting from across the United States with NBC.
Career highlights include her stories on the election of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and the trial of the cell known as “the Lackawanna Six”.
Kristen is a Lebanese-American who is experienced in print as well as broadcast media, in addition to her work for NBC she has written news for MTV, the youth-oriented American music television network.
Kristen has a master’s degree from the Columbia University graduate school of journalism where she was awarded the CNN fellowship, which involved writing, producing and reporting for the network.
Nick Spicer
Nick Spicer has over 10 years of international reporting experience in Europe and the Middle East for National Public Radio, the BBC, CBC Television, and other major broadcasters and print publications. He has reported from most European countries, as well as Kosovo, Afghanistan, Chechnya, Iraq and Libya.
He joined Al Jazeera English as a correspondent after spending three years in Moscow, reporting in English and French for Canada’s public television CBC/Radio-Canada. Before that he worked out of Paris for National Public Radio, covering France and European Union affairs.
During the buildup to the war in Iraq, Nick covered the transatlantic diplomatic crisis and events at Central Command in Doha, Qatar. He then travelled in Iraq to cover attempts to reconstruct the country and the nascent insurgency. Spicer holds an MA from France’s SciencesPo politics school, a degree in French literature from the Sorbonne, and a BA in English literature.
Avi Lewis
Avi Lewis is one of Canada’s most well-known media personalities. He joined AJE in 2008 and now co-hosts Fault Lines, AJE’s US-based current affairs program that digs deeper into what is driving the big stories of the day.
Before joining AJE, Avi hosted On The Map with Avi Lewis and The Big Picture with Avi Lewis, which were both broadcast on CBC Newsworld.
His first feature documentary, The Take, followed Argentina’s new movement of worker-run businesses. It premiered at the Venice Film Festival, was nominated for 4 Gemini Awards, and won the International Jury prize at the American Film Institute festival in Los Angeles.
In the late 90’s, as the host and producer of CounterSpin on CBC Newsworld, Lewis presided over more than 500 nationally televised debates in three years.
Shihab Rattansi
Shihab Rattansi brings vast international experience to his is role as a Washington DC- based presenter.
As an anchor at CNN International, Shihab reported several major global events including the capture of Saddam Hussein, the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri, suicide bombings in Israel and the Israeli attack on Yasser Arafat’s compound in Gaza.
Shihab’s work has been acknowledged by international audiences and critics, including the special recognition he received for his anchoring during the 2004 Asian Tsunami, for which CNN was awarded the 2006 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Broadcast News Award.
Additional experience includes presenting for several of CNN’s feature programs including Insight and Global Challenges and anchoring a weekly current affairs program on Channel News Asia, the pan-Asian satellite news channel based in Singapore.
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