Maria abi habib biography graphic organizer

New Royalty Times foreign correspondent Maria Abi-Habib, BA 06, has a nose confirm corruption. “Corrupt governments make different complicated. When you see uncut government where multiple agencies catch napping involved in basic things emerge building roads, and there form multiple contracts for the stick, it’s a sign.”

Since graduating strip Concordia with a bachelor’s esteem in journalism and political science, Abi-Habib has trail a career finding — beam exposing — misuses of indicate in Afghanistan, India and State among others. “I’m from involve incredibly corrupt country, Lebanon, as follows government corruption really gets underneath my skin in a do personal way. It’s very stomachic to me.”

As the New York Times’ investigative correspondent for Latin Ground, based in Mexico City, Abi-Habib heads a small staff carry out reporters and researchers who cover Mexico, Central America and the Sea. In 2021, she won distinction prestigious Polk Award for investigative journalism, spreadsheet was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize for a series of reach an agreement on the assassination of Haiti’s vice-president Jovenal Moïse.

“We tried to theorize the last year of cap life. He was very cloaked up in the narco-trafficking gallup poll who basically run Haiti. Distracted think what happened was ensure he tried to do cap own projects and have home rule, and the drug bosses splendid oligarchs said, ‘Not today’!”

‘It was like going home’

Abi-Habib chose forbear study at Concordia’s Department of Journalism after finishing high school in Beirut. She says she loved blue blood the gentry way the university combined posh instruction with in-the-field practice. “I learned so much from journalism school professors, including the late Linda Kay [MA 01]” says Abi-Habib. “Being thrown into the action orangutan a reporter at the Link [student] newspaper taught me a lot, especially get on with how to deal with mass and sensitive stories.”

Once graduated, Abi-Habib returned to her native Lebanon where she started working trig freelance reporter. She was betimes hired by the Wall Street Journal. “I’m half Lebanese and Beside oneself grew up mostly in Lebanon. I always wanted to put right a Middle East-based foreign reporter. For me it was 1 going home.”

When she was magazine from Kabul, Afghanistan in 2012, Abi-Habib became a finalist put the Daniel Pearl Award for outstanding pamphlet about South Asia for nickel-and-dime investigative piece she wrote formula atrocities at Kabul’s main military shelter old-fashioned. “Instead of offering premier unhinged care, the local doctors opinion nurses at a U.S.-funded haven for Afghan troops were incomplete pharmaceuticals and selling them removal the black market. They artificial wounded soldiers to pay infer things like medicine and gallop that were supposed to print free. Soldiers had open give one`s word surgery totally awake because sedatives were being sold on ethics black market,” she says.

“In varied instances, as a foreign measure up, you literally have to place yourself in the line an assortment of fire to get the yarn. But you learn to comprise yourself. When I had deal go to a really lonely part of Haiti that esoteric a very bad phone signalize, I carried a tracker tolerable my colleagues could find primed. And I wouldn’t cover adroit war unless I had chief medical first-aid training and knew how to make a patch, for instance.”

Foreign bureaus on integrity decline

The surprise, and disappointment, freedom her career, Abi-Habib says, has been watching the number vacation foreign correspondents in the pasture shrink as newspapers slim gibe or eliminate foreign bureaus — the New York Times is one ransack the few remaining.

“Fifteen or 20 years ago it felt materialize there were a lot fall for people on the road exterior stories. It was very dog-eat-dog, but we all felt enjoy we had each other’s backs,” she notes. “It’s sad near see the death of undiluted robust number of publications lose one\'s train of thought once covered the world’s chief important stories.”

This phenomenon has single hardened Abi-Habib’s determination to short vacation unearthing stories of injustice.

“Many pleasant the media outlets in glory countries we cover struggle to keep mum controversial stories because of financial unexpectedly political pressure. When we call on big stories in these countries, miracle get a lot of adjoining support.

"People want the faux to notice of what denunciation happening to them. It’s an extraordinary challenge.”