Lamis Elhadidy (Arabic: لميس الحديدي; born 8 November 1969[1]), is an Egyptian TV presenter. She also worked for Al-Masry Al-Youm newspaper.[2]

Lamis Elhadidy
Born
Lamis Ali Mohamed Ali Elhadidy

(1969-11-08) 8 November 1969 (age 55)
Cairo, Egypt
NationalityEgyptian
Alma materAmerican University in Cairo
OccupationPresenter
Spouse
Amr Adib
(m. 1999)
ChildrenNour El Dien (b. 1999)

Early life

edit

Lamis Elhadidy was born in November 1969 in Cairo, Egypt. Her father is Ali Elhadidy, a professor and dean in the Girls College of Ain Shams University, and her mother is Leila Buhairi, the granddaughter of a sheikh of Al-Azhar.[3]

In 1983, Elhadidy enrolled at the American University in Cairo, gaining her first editing experience with the university newspaper, The Caravan, where she worked her way up from a reporter to editor-in-chief.[4] In 1987, she graduated from AUC with a B.A. in Mass Communication with highest honors.[5] Her graduate work was a documentary film, Child Labour, on child labour in factories and problems with the workshops,[6] for which she received the Mustafa Amin Award in the same year.[5] Later she continued her studies at AUC's Kamal Adham Center and received a master's degree in broadcast journalism with highest honors in 1991.[7][4]

Career

edit

In 1987, Elhadidy started working as a desk producer for American TV network NBC in its Cairo bureau.[4] She moved on to the New York Times Cairo office in 1989, writing articles as a stringer for over three years.[5][4] During that time, she started writing in Arabic in Sabah El Kheir Ya Misr.[4]

In 1991, she established together with Emad El-Din Adeeb a first Egyptian business newspaper called Al Alam Al Youm,[7][4] where she worked as chief correspondent.[5] Since 2005, she became the chief executive officer of its weekly edition.[7]

In 1994, Elhadidy started her career on television as a correspondent of Arabic network MBC between Dubai and Cairo, then she joined TV channel Al Jazeera in 1999, where she worked as its Cairo business correspondent.[7][5] She spent a semester to study business telecommunication at Tufts University in Boston before joining CNBC Arabiya in 2003.[8][4] She served as the Cairo bureau chief of CNBC Arabiya up to 2005,[5] when she started working as the senior business correspondent of TV channel Al Arabiya in Cairo until 2009.[7] She was chosen by the nominating committee chaired by Queen Rania of Jordan to become one of the World Economic Forum's Young Global Leaders in 2006.[8][9][10]

In 2005, when the first multi-candidate presidential election was held in Egypt, she ran media operations for the re-election campaign of the then President, Hosni Mubarak, at the new National Democratic Party headquarters in Heliopolis.[8][11] The Al Alam Al Youm newspaper, where she worked as the managing editor at that time, was also engaged in providing favourable coverage to Mubarak's campaign promises.[12]

Elhadidy debuted as television presenter, hosting a program, Etkalem, which was broadcast each Monday on national Channel 1 from 2005 to 2009.[5][13] Subsequently, she became the presenter of various TV programs on state and private channels, such as Manea wa Mamnoua in 2007, Al-Ikhteyar Al-Saab in 2008, and Feesh wa Tashbeeh in 2009.[6][5] On 1 March 2010, she started to host her most popular 3 days a week show, Men Qalb Masr, on Nile Life Channel.[14] In the same year, she was named Best TV Anchor in two mass polls conducted by the newspapers, Al-Ahram and Al-Masry Al-Youm, for her TV programs.[4][15]

During the 2011 protests in Tahrir Square, she refused to appear on the state-owned Nile Life channel for spreading false information up until Mubarak stepped down.[16] She was criticized and assaulted for her strong anti-Islamist views along with her ties to the former regime,[17] and eventually lost her show Men Qalb Masr on Nile Life in March 2011,[18] as a result of the Muslim Brotherhood coming to power.[19] She argued to the accusations of her participation in the Mubarak's 2005 election campaign by analogy to the similar practice in the United States, where mass media also involved in the elections, but no one accuses them of bias in favor of the system.[16][20]

In July 2011, she moved on the satellite channel CBC, where she started to host Huna Al Asima and Half the Truth.[21] The CBC had been accused of being anti-Islamist and politically biased since its inauguration in June 2011,[22] and eventually been dubbed as the channel of feloul ("remnants"), because its presenters included Lamis Elhadidy and her brother-in-law Emad el-Din Adeeb, who made media contributions to Mubarak's 2005 presidential election campaign.[23][24]

On 13 December 2011, she and other Egyptian media personalities received death-threat text messages to their mobile phones, which caused the Egyptian Organization for Human Rights to call for protection of the media specialists.[25] In February 2012, she dedicated a whole episode of her show on CBC to the sexual assaults against women.[26]

In 2015, Elhadidy was voted Best Female Presenter by Dear Guest magazine.[27] She also was ranked as the 31st of the 100 most powerful Arab women in the world by Arabian Business,[28] and the 10th of the 50 most powerful women in Africa by Jeune Afrique.[29]

Personal life

edit

Since 1994 Elhadidy has been married to an Egyptian TV presenter, Amr Adib, with whom she has a son, Nur al-Din.[30]

Awards

edit
Year Award Awarded by
2006 Young Global Leader - Opinion & Media[10] World Economic Forum
2010 Special Award "Given by the DGF committee" for Dawam El Hal program[31] Dear Guest Festival
2010 Best Female Presenter[15] Al-Masry Al-Youm
2010 Best Female Presenter[4] Al-Ahram
2012 Best Female Presenter[32] Dear Guest Festival
2015 Best Female Presenter[27] Dear Guest Festival

References

edit
  1. ^ "Lamis Elhadidy". El Cinema. Archived from the original on 16 October 2016. Retrieved 14 November 2023.
  2. ^ "Muslim Women: Lamees El Hadidi". Women’s Islamic Initiative in Spirituality and Equality (WISE). Archived from the original on 23 July 2014. Retrieved 24 January 2016.
  3. ^ لميس الحديدى: والدى أستاذ جامعى أزهرى.. وناهد شريف ليست والدتى. Youm7 (in Arabic). June 22, 2013. Retrieved January 23, 2016.
  4. ^ a b c d e f g h i "El Hadidi Reflects on The Caravan 30 Years Later". The Caravan. November 1, 2015. Retrieved February 2, 2016.
  5. ^ a b c d e f g h "Watch Feesh Wa Tashbih with Lamis on Al Kahera Wal Nas". Tarek Nour Communications. August 23, 2009. Retrieved January 23, 2016.
  6. ^ a b اخبار الفنانين والاعلامين : شاهد معلومات لا تعرفها عن عمرو أديب ولميس الحديدي والفاجأة ماذا كان يعمل والد لميس الحديدي ؟؟؟. akhbar-today.com (in Arabic). Masress.com. September 22, 2013. Retrieved January 23, 2016.
  7. ^ a b c d e "Women On The Front Lines (WOFL) Speakers: Lamees Al Hadidi". May Chidiac Foundation. 2014. Retrieved January 23, 2016.
  8. ^ a b c Fayza Hassan (December 2005). "Lamis El-Hadidi". Egypt Today. Archived from the original on October 22, 2007. Retrieved February 5, 2016.
  9. ^ "The Full List of 2006 Young Global Leaders". Journal of Turkish Weekly. January 11, 2006. Retrieved February 5, 2016.
  10. ^ a b "YGL Alumni Community". World Economic Forum. Archived from the original on August 13, 2014. Retrieved February 5, 2016.
  11. ^ Guaaybess, Tourya (2015). "Broadcasting and Businessmen in Egypt: Revolution is Business". In Della Ratta, Donatella; Sakr, Naomi & Skovgaard-Petersen, Jakob (eds.). Arab Media Moguls. Library of Modern Middle East Studies. London; New York: I.B.Tauris. pp. 169–170. ISBN 9781780767321.
  12. ^ Sakr, Naomi (2007). "Chapter 2: Law and Policy on Ownership and Content". Arab Television Today. London: I.B.Tauris. p. 30. ISBN 978-1-84511-563-0.
  13. ^ "Biography: Lamis Elhadidy" (in Arabic). elCinema.com. Retrieved February 2, 2016.
  14. ^ لميس الحديدى تراهن على "من قلب مصر". Youm7 (in Arabic). January 17, 2010. Retrieved February 5, 2016.
  15. ^ a b Ahmed Ramadan (September 28, 2010). "Al-Masry Al-Youm readers give props to best of Ramadan TV". Al-Masry Al-Youm. Masress.com. Retrieved February 2, 2016.
  16. ^ a b Rania Saadeddin (April 7, 2011). لميس الحديدي لـ "الشرق الأوسط" : مشاركتي في حملة الرئيس السابق الانتخابية كانت مجرد وظيفة. Asharq Al-Awsat (in Arabic). No. 11818. Retrieved February 14, 2016.
  17. ^ Massad, Joseph (August 9, 2012). "Egypt's nouveaux riches and the Palestinians". Al Jazeera. Retrieved March 6, 2016.
  18. ^ لميس الحديدي… بوق الأنظمة (in Arabic). Yanair.net. July 19, 2015. Retrieved March 6, 2016.
  19. ^ Abu-Fadil, Magda (April 7, 2011). "Egyptian Media Purges Continue, Critics Call for Total Overhaul". The Huffington Post. Retrieved February 14, 2016.
  20. ^ Giannangeli, Marco (September 4, 2005). "Mubarak looks west for election tactics". The Daily Telegraph. Retrieved February 14, 2016.
  21. ^ Abdalla F. Hassan (2015). Media, Revolution and Politics in Egypt: The Story of an Uprising. London; New York: I.B.Tauris. p. 234. ISBN 9780857739810.
  22. ^ "Liberal Media - CBC (Capital Broadcasting Center) - TV Channel". Middle East Institute. Retrieved March 6, 2016.
  23. ^ Kamal, Ahmad (April 2015). "6.2.2: Anti-Brotherhood agenta". Contentious information: Accounts of knowledge production, circulation and consumption in transitional Egypt (Ph.D.). University of Western Ontario. pp. 134–135.
  24. ^ Sakr, Naomi (2013). Transformations in Egyptian Journalism (PDF). London: I.B.Tauris. p. 18. ISBN 978-1-78076-589-1.
  25. ^ "EOHR calls for protection of the media specialists". Egyptian Organization for Human Rights. December 15, 2011. Retrieved February 14, 2016.
  26. ^ Tadros, Mariz (June 2013). "Politically Motivated Sexual Assault and the Law in Violent Transitions: A Case Study From Egypt" (PDF). Institute of Development Studies. p. 25.
  27. ^ a b "2015 Festival - Dear Guest Festival, DG Festival, Egypt Festival, Egyptian Festival, Egypt Survey". Dgfest.com. Retrieved February 2, 2016.
  28. ^ "The World's 100 Most Powerful Arab Women". Arabian Business. Retrieved 11 February 2015.
  29. ^ Laurent De Saint Perier (January 12, 2015). "Égypte: Lamees al-Hadidi, journaliste de combat". Jeune Afrique (in French). Retrieved February 2, 2016.
  30. ^ "Rare Picture From Amr Adeeb and Lamis Al Hadidi's Wedding". Arabia Weddings. January 17, 2015. Retrieved January 23, 2016.
  31. ^ "2010 Festival - Dear Guest Festival, DG Festival, Egypt Festival, Egyptian Festival, Egypt Survey". Dgfest.com. Retrieved February 2, 2016.
  32. ^ "2012 Festival - Dear Guest Festival, DG Festival, Egypt Festival, Egyptian Festival, Egypt Survey". Dgfest.com. Retrieved February 2, 2016.