Leila Fadel Named Host of Morning Edition and Up First

RADIO ONLINE | Tuesday, December 28, 2021

Leila Fadel

NPR names Leila Fadel as the fourth host of "Morning Edition," NPR's morning drive time news magazine carried by 834 public radio stations, and "Up First," NPR's daily morning news podcast. Fadel's first day on-air will be announced in the coming weeks. She will be based at NPR headquarters in Washington, DC. Fadel will join Steve Inskeep, A Martinez, and Rachel Martin on the bi-coastal, 24-hour news operation.

"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," said Fadel. "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."

"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 NPR Vice President for News Programming Sarah Gilbert. "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."

Fadel is currently a national correspondent for NPR based in Los Angeles. Previously, she was NPR's international correspondent based in Cairo, from where she covered the wave of revolts in the Middle East and their aftermath in Libya, Tunisia, Egypt, and beyond. In 2016 she returned to the United States 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, she covered the Middle East for The Washington Post as the 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.