ElectionLine’s View From Abroad: Al Arabiya’s Washington D.C. Chief Nadia Bilbassy-Charters On Feeling Like The “Lone Voice” Grilling White House Officials Over The Israel-Gaza Crisis
05.06.2024 - 18:19
/ deadline.com
Welcome to ElectionLine’s A View From Abroad series, in which we speak with media figures who are not from America but keep a close eye on its politics. Every few weeks, these smart observers will provide a unique perspective on the fraught and unpredictable campaign for the White House. This week, our interview is with Nadia Bilbassy-Charters, the Washington D.C. bureau chief for Al Arabiya, the state-owned Saudi Arabian Arabic news network.
Nadia Bilbassy-Charters evokes a vivid image as she recalls her former home in Gaza City. She speaks of a happy place; a sun-soaked villa with cherry, fig, and olive trees on the shore of the Mediterranean Sea. It is all rubble now, she says ruefully. And the tragic consequences of the Israel-Gaza crisis are not just bound up in bricks and mortar for Bilbassy-Charters: 12 members of her extended family have been killed since the Hamas atrocities of October 7.
Al Arabiya’s Washington D.C. bureau chief only allows herself a flicker of sentiment as she reflects on the personal toll of the Middle East conflict. “I don’t really feel it’s relevant to my reporting,” she says without hesitation when asked if she can separate colliding personal and professional interests.
Bilbassy-Charters is a journalist of deep experience. She earned her stripes covering the 1980s Palestinian Intifada for AFP, before working for the BBC and British newspaper The Independent. Her reporting has taken her to 56 different countries, including being stationed in Ethiopia and Kenya for MBC Group, the Saudi media conglomerate. By 2003, Bilbassy-Charters had moved to the U.S. to cover politics for Al Arabiya and she now calls the country home. Her children are Americans, she says.
Bilbassy-Charters has been in
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