Loading ...Pathbreakers of Arab America—Hala Gorani
By: John Mason / Arab America Contributing Writer
This is the seventieth of Arab America’s series on American pathbreakers of Arab descent. The series includes personalities from entertainment, business, sports, science, arts, academia, journalism, and politics, among other areas. Our seventieth pathbreaker is Hala Basha-Gorani, an award-winning anchor and correspondent with over 25 years of experience. Born to parents of Syrian origin, she has covered history-defining stories and events, recently as a primetime anchor for her show “Hala Gorani Tonight” on CNN. Presently a correspondent for NBC News, Hala is regarded as an expert in the media industry, human and social rights, women’s empowerment, and international affairs, especially Middle East politics.
Globetrotting to some of the most dangerous places in the world, Gorani has covered elections, revolutions, natural disasters, and conflicts on five continents, sometimes escaping with her life by a hair
Hala Basha-Gorani was born in 1970 in Seattle, Washington, to Syrian and French parents who emigrated from Aleppo, Syria, in 1966. Her name, according to Wikipedia’s Series on Arab Americans, originates from ‘hāla’, a common Arabic name meaning ‘halo (around the moon).’ Her father first worked as an engineer in Seattle, then moved to St. Louis for three years and thereafter to Algeria when Gorani was four years old. Following two years in Algeria, her parents divorced, and Gorani, at the age of six, moved to Paris with her mother while her father moved to Washington, D.C. Hala was mainly raised in Paris, France.
Hala earned a Bachelor of Science in economics from George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia, near Washington, D.C., and wrote for the student newspaper, ‘The Broadside,’ which later became the ‘Fourth Estate.’ She also graduated from the Institut d’études politiques (better known as Sciences Po) in Paris in 1995. Gorani began her career as a reporter for ‘La Voix du Nord’ and Agence France-Presse before joining France 3 in 1994. Following a stint at Bloomberg Television in London, she joined CNN in 1998 as an anchor for CNN International’s European breakfast show ‘CNN Today.’
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 the January Charlie Hebdo shooting in Paris 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.
She previously reported extensively from Jordan and Egypt, and her coverage of the Arab Spring helped CNN win a Peabody Award in 2012. Hala formerly hosted ‘Inside the Middle East’ on CNN International, the monthly show featuring stories on the region’s most critical social, political, and cultural issues. 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. 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. Gorani married German CNN photojournalist Christian Streib on June 14, 2015, in Jardin Majorelle, Morocco. They currently live in London. Having left CNN after her final show on 28 April 2022, Gorani took a sabbatical from broadcasting to work on her first book, a memoir exploring the subject of identity, which was published by Hachette Book Group in February 2024 and titled, ‘But You Don’t Look Arab: And Other Tales of Unbelonging.’ She is fluent in Arabic, French, and English.
Gorani weaves stories from her time as a globe-trotting correspondent and anchor with her lifelong search for identity as the daughter of Syrian immigrants
Ultimately, however, Gorani needed to go outside of herself to trace a long family history of uprooted ancestors, from the courts of Ottoman Empire sultans through the stories of the citizens from her home country and other places torn apart by unrest. Out of her search came “But You Don’t Look Arab and Other Tales of Unbelonging,” a family history combined with rigorous reporting, explaining—and most importantly, humanizing—the constant upheavals in the Middle East over the last century. While researching her book, scanning old diaries, Gorani discovered her Georgian roots in a village called Abkhazia, an Ottoman protectorate on the Black Sea. From there, the story moves to Istanbul until 1909, when her family leaves and lands in Aleppo, an Ottoman province at that time.
Growing up, Hala wasn’t quite sure of her identity. She wanted to know where she belonged, what was her “tribe?” She once remarked, “And how does a blonde-haired, blue-eyed woman who’s never lived in the Middle East honor her Arab Muslim ancestry and displaced family—a family forced to scatter when their home country was torn apart by war?” Out of Hala’s search came the idea for her book, her path to self-discovery, which started the moment she could understand that she was “other” wherever she found herself to be. As mentioned earlier, born of Syrian parents in America and raised mainly in France, “she didn’t feel at home in Aleppo, Seattle, Paris, or London. She is a citizen of everywhere and nowhere. And like many journalists who’ve covered wars and conflicts, she felt most at home on the ground reporting and in front of the camera.”
Gorani’s book begins in 2010, in Port-au-Prince, after the Haiti Earthquake. At the Napoli Inn Hotel, first-response teams were attempting to rescue a man who had been trapped inside a building for eleven hours. There, Gorani found a man who happened to be from Aleppo. “Two uprooted Syrians meeting in an unlikely place,” she writes, as those connections further deepen her determination to discover herself.
Through her career, Gorani learned to observe, witness and report. Looking back, she is proud of her career, which has compelled her to navigate the globe. She recollects her early years as moving back and forth “between her youth and career, between jobs and positions, countries and assignments, and personal and professional events, helping her solidify her footing in the pursuit of discovering herself and the stories that make the world go round.”
Hala has done it all well—her pride is well-deserved, and we are all enriched by her excellence in journalism. To top it off, she has welcomed her Syrian Arab identity with joy.
Sources:
–“Hala Basha-Gorani ,” Wikipedia Series on Arab Americans, 2024
–“Hala Gorani,” personal biography
–“Hala Gorani explores her roots in ‘But You Don’t Look Arab,’” Amazon book review, 3/5/2024
–“Emmy Award-winning international journalist Hala Gorani weaves stories from her time as a globe-trotting correspondent and anchor with her own lifelong search for identity as the daughter of Syrian immigrants,” Arab News
John Mason, Ph.D., focuses on Arab culture, society, and history and is the author of LEFT-HANDED IN AN ISLAMIC WORLD: An Anthropologist’s Journey into the Middle East, New Academia Publishing, 2017. He has taught at the University of Libya, Benghazi, Rennselaer Polytechnic Institute in New York, and the American University in Cairo; John served with the United Nations in Tripoli, Libya, and consulted extensively on socioeconomic and political development for USAID and the World Bank in 65 countries.
The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of Arab America. The reproduction of this article is permissible with proper credit to Arab America and the author.
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