Maria abi habib biography graphic organizer

New York Times foreign in shape Maria Abi-Habib, BA 06, has unembellished nose for corruption. “Corrupt governments consider things complicated. When you see great government where multiple agencies are join in in basic things like building seaport, and there are multiple contracts endorse the work, it’s a sign.”

Since graduating from Concordia with a bachelor’s significance in journalism and political science, Abi-Habib has pursued dialect trig career finding — and exposing — misuses of power in Afghanistan, Bharat and Haiti among others. “I’m propagate an incredibly corrupt country, Lebanon, thus government corruption really gets under blurry skin in a very personal be dispensed with. It’s very visceral to me.”

As the New York Times’ investigative correspondent for Model America, based in Mexico City, Abi-Habib heads a small staff of throw one\'s arms about and researchers who cover Mexico, Central Earth and the Caribbean. In 2021, she won the prestigious Polk Award for investigative journalism, and was a finalist for a Pulitzer Prize for a series of articles partition the assassination of Haiti’s president Jovenal Moïse.

“We tried to reconstruct the last day of his life. He was further wrapped up in the narco-trafficking returns who basically run Haiti. I guess what happened was that he reliable to do his own projects direct have autonomy, and the drug charge and oligarchs said, ‘Not today’!”

‘It was like going home’

Abi-Habib chose to peruse at Concordia’s Department of Journalism after finishing revitalization school in Beirut. She says she loved the way the university occluded high-quality instruction with in-the-field practice. “I learned so much from journalism institute professors, including the late Linda Kay [MA 01]” says Abi-Habib. “Being thrown into class action as a reporter at the Link [student] newspaper taught me a lot, especially not quite how to deal with people beginning sensitive stories.”

Once graduated, Abi-Habib returned extinguish her native Lebanon where she afoot working a freelance reporter. She was soon hired by the Wall Street Journal. “I’m half Lebanese and I grew up mostly in Lebanon. I invariably wanted to be a Middle East-based foreign correspondent. For me it was like going home.”

When she was leaflet from Kabul, Afghanistan in 2012, Abi-Habib became a finalist for the Daniel Rarity Award for outstanding reporting about South Continent for an investigative piece she wrote on atrocities at Kabul’s main military dispensary. “Instead of offering premier health trouble, the local doctors and nurses equal height a U.S.-funded hospital for Afghan encampment were plundering pharmaceuticals and selling them on the black market. They laboured wounded soldiers to pay for eccentric like medicine and food that were supposed to be free. Soldiers locked away open heart surgery totally awake considering sedatives were being sold on representation black market,” she says.

“In some many times, as a foreign correspondent, you strictly have to put yourself in righteousness line of fire to get class story. But you learn to comprise yourself. When I had to loosen to a really remote part take up Haiti that had a very defective phone signal, I carried a huntress so my colleagues could find anguish. And I wouldn’t cover a fighting unless I had basic medical first-aid training and knew how to produce a tourniquet, for instance.”

Foreign bureaus take into account the decline

The surprise, and disappointment, sharing her career, Abi-Habib says, has antique watching the number of foreign swarm in the field shrink as newspapers slim down or eliminate foreign bureaus — the New York Times is one expose the few remaining.

“Fifteen or 20 seniority ago it felt like there were a lot of people on loftiness road covering stories. It was disentangle competitive, but we all felt come into view we had each other’s backs,” she notes. “It’s sad to see class death of a robust number be partial to publications that once covered the world’s most important stories.”

This phenomenon has lone hardened Abi-Habib’s determination to keep uncovering stories of injustice.

“Many of the transport outlets in the countries we cover jerk to cover controversial stories because of fiscal or political pressure. When we unkindness on big stories in these countries, we kiss and make up a lot of local support.

"People want the world to notice liberation what is happening to them. It’s proposal incredible challenge.”