Hala Gorani


Hala Basha-Gorani is an American journalist working as an anchor and correspondent for CNN International, based in London. She currently anchors CNN's Hala Gorani Tonight weeknights at 8 p.m. CET. Gorani co-hosted Your World Today with Jim Clancy until February 2009 and then International Desk until April 2014 from CNN's Atlanta headquarters.

Career

Gorani began her career as a reporter for La Voix du Nord and Agence France-Presse before joining France 3 in 1994. After a stint at Bloomberg Television in London, she joined CNN in 1998 as an anchor for CNN International's European breakfast show CNN Today. She has since reported from every country in the Middle East. In November 2005, Gorani was one of the first television reporters on the ground in Amman, Jordan after Al Qaeda suicide bombers attacked two hotels. Earlier in 2005, she covered Israel's unilateral disengagement plan from Gaza. In the summer of 2006, she covered the 2006 Lebanon War from Lebanon, which earned CNN an Edward R. Murrow Award. In 2002 and in 2007, she led CNN's coverage of the respective French presidential elections.
Gorani was one of the CNN journalists awarded a News and Documentary Emmy for the network's coverage of the 2011 Egyptian revolution that led to the ouster of the country's then president, Hosni Mubarak. In 2015, she covered from Paris the January Charlie Hebdo shooting and the November ISIS attacks.
Gorani also covered the devastating 2010 Haiti earthquake, for which CNN's coverage was recognized with a Golden Nymph award, one of the highest honors in international journalism, at the Monte-Carlo Television Festival that year. In addition to her anchoring duties, Gorani often goes into the field to report on major breaking news stories. In late June, she was part of a small team of journalists allowed into Syria for the first time since the protests began to cover the situation there. She previously reported extensively from Jordan and Egypt, and her coverage of the Arab Spring helped CNN win a Peabody Award in 2012.
In 2008, Gorani attended the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and she moderated the closing session that featured several business and political leaders including Tony Blair, Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Elie Wiesel and JP Morgan Chase & Co. Chairman and CEO James Dimon.
Gorani formerly hosted Inside the Middle East on CNN International, the monthly show featuring stories on the most important social, political and cultural issues in the region. During her five years as host, she reported on several colorful and thought-provoking stories including poverty in oil-rich Bahrain; everyday struggles for artists living in Iraq; and gay life in the Middle East, which was a first on international television and earned a nomination for a Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation award.
Gorani has interviewed Jimmy Carter, Tony Blair, Amr Moussa, Rafik Hariri, Saeb Erakat, Nouri al-Maliki, Ehud Barak, the Dalai Lama, Shimon Peres and Carla Bruni, among others. Gorani avoids discussing her political and religious views, citing the need for professional neutrality.
In May 2015, Gorani was awarded an honorary doctorate by George Mason University and delivered the commencement address to that year's graduating students.
On the weekend of 13–15 November 2015, Gorani was a principal member of the extensive CNN team that covered the action, aftermath and investigation of terrorist attacks in Paris, France where some 130 people were killed.
In 2018, Gorani was nominated for another News and Documentary Emmy for Outstanding Breaking News Coverage, Manchester Concert Attack. That same year, she and her team received an Emmy Award for her show's coverage of "."
In a commencement address, Gorani offered these observations to the new graduates: Gorani says that as a journalist, career defining moments are those where one can identify that the work did make a difference; and the being different is a good thing because those differences will make a person memorable. Gorani advised the students to cultivate their differences and from them the students will find their strength.

Personal life

Gorani was born in 1970 in Seattle, Washington. According to her, she comes from "quite an international background.... I'm a U.S. citizen with Syrian Arab parents."
Gorani was mainly raised in Paris, France. She has also lived in Algeria. Her name "Ha'la" is a common Arabic name meaning "halo around the moon." She earned a Bachelor of Science in economics from George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, near Washington, D.C., and graduated from the Institut d'études politiques in Paris in 1995. Due to her multi-national experiences during her formative years, the sound of her name, and her accent, Gorani says that she is a foreigner wherever she goes.
Gorani is fluent in English, French and Arabic. She considers Paris her home, which is also where her mother resides.
From 2004 to 2014, she was based at the CNN Center in Atlanta, Georgia, and in 2014 she moved back to London.
French novelist Yann Moix also dedicated his first novel Jubilations Vers le Ciel to her in 1996.
Gorani married German CNN photojournalist Christian Streib on June 14, 2015, in Jardin Majorelle, Morocco.
Gorani has a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel dog named Louis Gorani Streib that appears with her and her husband frequently on her . The dog is the subject of an to capture Louis the dog's exploits.

Awards and recognition

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