🎧 #86 — Dalal Mawad (Associated Press‪)‬ Inside The Newsroom

Hello folks! Happy U.S. election day and welcome to another episode of Inside The Newsroom! Best of luck to everyone voting today, I’ll be following along every step and making a whole lot of charts along the way!
Before I do, I can’t wait to share my conversation with Dalal Mawad, senior producer and correspondent for the Associated Press, and perhaps the most accomplished guest at such a young age we’ve ever had on the podcast. I was also joined by Aina, my very first co-host, as we learned from Dalal what it was like living and reporting through the huge chemical explosion in August, and how the heck the country escapes its deep political and economic crises.
Be sure to check out last week’s episode with New York Times editorial writer Binyamin Appelbaum, who took us inside what it was like to interview the Democratic presidential candidates last year, his views on news reporting vs opinion journalism, and what policies are needed to solve the harshest income inequalities highlighted by Covid-19… 👇
I’m still figuring out next week’s guest, so until then, enjoy this week’s… 🤓
Job Corner
We upped our game to add almost 200 new postings to the job board, taking our total to 900! Help us out be spreading the word!
Data Corner
* Refugees: Database on the world’s refugees, from the UN
* Protests: Global mass protest and conflict data, from ACLED
Who is Dalal Mawad?
Dalal was born and raised in Lebanon and has carefully observed everything that’s happened in her country over the past 15 years. She graduated with a bachelor’s in economics from the American University of Beirut, a master’s in international political economics from the London School of Economics, and a master’s in journalism from Columbia. Oh, she also happens to be fluent in English, Arabic, French and Spanish. I’m not jealous at all…
Dalal covers the entire Middle East and North Africa region, and has reported on several wars and other disasters in the past, including Syria’s civil war and Palestine’s humanitarian crisis. Before the AP, she reported for the UN, Al Jazeera, and the New York Times. She’s also the recent winner of the Samir Kassir Award, the MENA region's most prestigious journalism award, for her feature on Lebanon’s drag performers.
Dalal 👇
Blast Investigation Update
Tomorrow marks three months since one of the largest non-nuclear explosions in history, at a warehouse in the Port of Beirut that killed more than 200 people and ripped the city to shreds. Political interference and a seriously flawed judicial system mean we still don’t have answers on who was responsible. Calls for an independent international investigation were discarded as a waste of time by President Michel Aoun, making a credible and impartial domestic investigation seemingly impossible.
Two fires that broke out on September 8 and September 10 prompted allegations of evidence tampering, and as of October 13, reports say 25 people have been arrested in relation to the explosion. But the authorities have failed to publicly detail any evidence, and not a single minister has been questioned as a suspect. Meanwhile the FBI has also failed to conclude what caused the blast, and U.S. government sources have suggested the blast was an accident. The country’s economic and political woes mean there’s simply not enough money to compensate the people of Beirut, as outlined in Rania’s tweet below…
Crisis No. 1: Politics
Lebanon’s political and economic crises are directly linked and haven’t appeared overnight. Before we dive into where the economy stands, let’s recap a tumultuous 15 years that is the root for most of the country’s problems…
2005: Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri is killed in a car bomb, killing 21 others. Hezbollah enters government for the first time.
2006: Hezbollah goes to war with Israel, which kills 1,200 Lebanese in five weeks.
2008: Diplomatic relations with Syria are established for the firs