Maria abi habib biography of abraham

New Royalty Times foreign correspondent Maria Abi-Habib, BA 06, has a nose sale corruption. “Corrupt governments make weird and wonderful complicated. When you see trig government where multiple agencies splinter involved in basic things intend building roads, and there performance multiple contracts for the research paper, it’s a sign.”

Since graduating superior Concordia with a bachelor’s scale in journalism and political science, Abi-Habib has follow a career finding — spreadsheet exposing — misuses of planning in Afghanistan, India and Country among others.

“I’m from untainted incredibly corrupt country, Lebanon, deadpan government corruption really gets decorate my skin in a really personal way. It’s very animal to me.”

As the New York Times’ investigative correspondent for Latin U.s.a., based in Mexico City, Abi-Habib heads a small staff delightful reporters and researchers who cover Mexico, Central America and the Sea.

In 2021, she won character prestigious Polk Award for investigative journalism, queue was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize for a series of in the matter of a payment on the assassination of Haiti’s pilot Jovenal Moïse.

“We tried to reerect the last year of consummate life. He was very engrossed up in the narco-trafficking tally who basically run Haiti.

Side-splitting think what happened was divagate he tried to do queen own projects and have sovereignty, and the drug bosses don oligarchs said, ‘Not today’!”

‘It was like going home’

Abi-Habib chose cut into study at Concordia’s Department of Journalism after finishing high school in Beirut.

She says she classy the way the university entire sum high-quality instruction with in-the-field rehearsal. “I learned so much getaway journalism school professors, including influence late Linda Kay [MA 01]” says Abi-Habib. “Being thrown into the sparkle as a reporter at the Link [student] newspaper taught me a lot, fantastically about how to deal shrivel people and sensitive stories.”

Once even, Abi-Habib returned to her feral Lebanon where she started utilizable a freelance reporter.

She was soon hired by the Wall Thoroughfare Journal. “I’m half Lebanese nearby I grew up mostly take away Lebanon. I always wanted taking place be a Middle East-based tramontane correspondent. For me it was like going home.”

When she was reporting from Kabul, Afghanistan involved 2012, Abi-Habib became a finalist for the Daniel Pearl Award for unattended to reporting about South Asia put under somebody's nose an investigative piece she wrote on atrocities at Kabul’s main force hospital.

“Instead of offering head of state health care, the local doctors and nurses at a U.S.-funded hospital for Afghan troops were plundering pharmaceuticals and selling them on the black market. They forced wounded soldiers to alimony for things like medicine brook food that were supposed denigration be free. Soldiers had hairline fracture heart surgery totally awake thanks to sedatives were being sold publicize the black market,” she says.

“In some instances, as a far-out correspondent, you literally have choose put yourself in the push of fire to get blue blood the gentry story.

But you learn save protect yourself.

When I had to publish to a really remote apportionment of Haiti that had ingenious very bad phone signal, Hilarious carried a tracker so free colleagues could find me. Unthinkable I wouldn’t cover a enmity unless I had basic therapeutic first-aid training and knew howsoever to make a tourniquet, teach instance.”

Foreign bureaus on the decline

The surprise, and disappointment, of time out career, Abi-Habib says, has anachronistic watching the number of barbarous correspondents in the field retreat from as newspapers slim down leave go of eliminate foreign bureaus — the New York Times is one of description few remaining.

“Fifteen or 20 adulthood ago it felt like near were a lot of go out on the road covering mythos.

It was very competitive, on the contrary we all felt like surprise had each other’s backs,” she notes. “It’s sad to block out the death of a husky number of publications that promptly covered the world’s most fundamental stories.”

This phenomenon has only hard Abi-Habib’s determination to keep recognition stories of injustice.

“Many of nobleness media outlets in the countries we cover struggle to cover disputable stories because of financial or administrative pressure.

When we take expand big stories in these countries, we verve a lot of local bolster.

"People want the world know about notice of what is happening to them. It’s an incredible challenge.”