Rana Sabbagh

Rana Sabbagh is the Executive Director of Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism (ARIJ).

A founder and executive director of ARIJ since 2005, Rana Sabbagh has dedicated the last 33 years of her career as a journalist, columnist and media trainer to free speech, independent and free media and human rights.

She helped set up ARIJ – www.arij.net – a media support network spreading the culture of “accountability journalism” in newsrooms and among media students in Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Iraq, Yemen, Palestine, Bahrain and Tunisia. The NGO, mainly supported by the governments of Norway, Sweden and Denmark – as well as the Open Society Foundations, has helped over 340 Arab journalists produce in-depth reporting in favor of transparency and rule of law.

Her role has been to help Arab journalists achieve professional standards, comparable to those in the West and assist them in fighting for their rights and negotiating the minefield of state censorship. In fulfilling this mission, she travels widely in the region and organizes workshops on a regular basis in the nine countries where ARIJ operates – despite the political unrest of the last three years.

The former chief editor of The Jordan Times (1999-Jan 2002) became the first Arab female in the history of the Levant to run a daily political newspaper. Earlier, she was correspondent for Reuters International News Agency (1987-1997) in Jordan and the Gulf. She helped establish Jordan's newest newspaper, Al-Ghad (2003-2004).

In addition to her post at ARIJ, she is the Jordan correspondent for The Times (of London), regular columnist for Al-Hayat and media consultant/trainer for Thomson Reuters Foundation. She serves as an active member of various civil society and media advocacy groups, including, the International Women Forum and sits on the jury committee of several international media prizes. She is board member of the Global Network for Investigative Journalism (GNIJ)