Rana Sabbagh
Rana Sabbagh (2019) has dedicated the last 33 years of her career to journalism, publishing and media training to support free speech, independent media and human rights. Rana founded the Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism (ARIJ) network in 2005 as a media support organization, spreading the notion of accountability journalism to newsrooms, media professors and students based in Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Iraq, Yemen, Palestine, Bahrain and Tunisia.
As the former chief editor of The Jordan Times, Rana became the first Arab woman in the history of the Levant to run a daily political newspaper. Prior to her work with the newspaper, she was a correspondent for Reuters International News Agency in Jordan and the Gulf. In 2003, she assisted in establishing Jordan’s newest newspaper, Al-Ghad. In addition to her current post at ARIJ, Rana is the representative for the Middle East and North Africa on the first elected board of directors of the Global Investigative Journalism Network (GIJN). She has also worked as the Jordanian correspondent for the British daily newspaper The Times newspaper, as well as a former media consultant and trainer for the Thomson Reuters Foundation. She is currently a regular columnist for Al-Hayat and Al-Ghad newspapers.