Leila Fadel
Leila Fadel is a national correspondent for NPR based in Los Angeles, covering issues of culture, diversity, and race.
Most recently, she was NPR's international correspondent based in Cairo and covered the wave of revolts in the Middle East and their aftermaths in Libya, Tunisia, Egypt, and beyond. Her stories brought us to the heart of a state-ordered massacre of pro-Muslim Brotherhood protesters in Cairo in 2013 when police shot into crowds of people to clear them and killed between 1,000 and 2,000 people. She told us the tales of a coup in Egypt and what it is like for a country to go through a military overthrow of an elected government. She covered the fall of Mosul to ISIS in 2014 and documented the harrowing tales of the Yazidi women who were kidnapped and enslaved by the group. Her coverage also included stories of human smugglers in Egypt and the Syrian families desperate and willing to pay to risk their lives and cross a turbulent ocean for Europe.
She was awarded the Lowell Thomas Award from the Overseas Press Club for her coverage of the 2013 coup in Egypt and the toll it took on the country and Egyptian families. In 2017 she earned a Gracie award for the story of a single mother in Tunisia whose two eldest daughters were brainwashed and joined ISIS. The mother was fighting to make sure it didn't happen to her younger girls.
Before joining NPR, she covered the Middle East for The Washington Post as the Cairo Bureau Chief. Prior to her position as Cairo Bureau Chief for the Post, she covered the Iraq war for nearly five years with Knight Ridder, McClatchy Newspapers, and later the Washington Post. Her foreign coverage of the devastating human toll of the Iraq war earned her the George. R. Polk award in 2007. In 2016 she was the Council on Foreign Relations Edward R. Murrow fellow.
Leila Fadel is a Lebanese-American journalist who speaks conversational Arabic and was raised in Saudi Arabia and Lebanon.
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Hungary's Viktor Orbán has chipped away at institutions that make a democracy healthy, including the judiciary, where he has stacked courts with loyalists, reduced judges' pay and limited expression.
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A new law in Hungary may jeopardize funding that news agencies rely on from overseas grants. Supporters say it protects the country from outside influence. Critics say it's a way to stifle the free press.
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Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán is a divisive figure on the world stage and at home. But the farther you drive outside of the city, the more support you find for him.
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Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán has been called "Trump before there was a Trump." Here's why his reshaping of Hungary's political institutions inspires U.S. conservatives. -
Federal trade court blocks many of Trump's tariffs, Trump expressing frustration with Putin and Russia's continued war on Ukraine, Conservative Political Action Conference begins in Hungary.
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Conservative Political Action Conference chairman Matt Schlapp tells NPR's Leila Fadel in the Hungarian capital Budapest that the group is expanding to cities around the globe. -
Many Hungarians say they're watching their democratic institutions crumble under Prime Minister Viktor Orbán. That's now a driving factor for many young Hungarians pursuing a higher education abroad.
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NPR's Leila Fadel speaks with author and former Director of the FBI, James Comey, about his latest crime novel, "FDR Drive." Comey also speaks about a recent probe into one of his Instagram posts.
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The massive tax and immigration bill at the heart of President Trump's second term plans faces continued resistance from both moderates and hardliners.
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Trump's "big, beautiful bill" faces continued resistance, South Africa's president heads to the White House, DOGE tries to embed beyond the executive branch.
