Fadel Joins NPR’s Morning Edition
• Leila Fadel has been selected as the fourth host of NPR’s Morning Edition, the morning drive news magazine carried by 834 public radio stations nationwide, and Up First, NPR’s daily morning news podcast. Fadel is currently a national correspondent for NPR based in Los Angeles, covering race and identity.
Fadel will be relocating to NPR’s DC HQ, and her first day on-air with co-hosts Steve Inskeep, A Martinez, and Rachel Martin will be announced in the coming weeks. “We are delighted to have Leila join the Morning Edition team, she has had an exceptional career to date, covering some of the biggest stories of our time on both the national and international stage,” said Sarah Gilbert, NPR’s VP for News Programming. “Leila’s experience and range as a journalist and host made her the natural choice for this role, which she will take up from February of 2022, based in DC.”
“This work is about telling stories that reflect our nation and the world as it is, to have conversations that illuminate and that hold our public officials to account,” Fadel said. “No place does this work better than NPR. I’m excited to take my years of field reporting, at home and abroad, to the host chair and work with a team I’ve long admired.”
Fadel earlier served as NPR’s international correspondent based in Cairo. In 2016 she returned to the U.S. to be a Council on Foreign Relations Edward R. Murrow fellow. In 2017 she won a Gracie Award for the story: She’s Lost 2 Daughters To ISIS; Will Her Younger Girls Be Next? Before joining NPR, Fadel covered the Middle East for The Washington Post as Cairo Bureau Chief, and 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. [Photo courtesy of Leila Fadel]
