Nora_Boustany
Nora Boustany
Lebanese journalist and educator
Nora Naaman Boustany is a Lebanese-American journalist and educator known for her coverage of the Middle East and human rights issues.[1][2]
Boustany worked for United Press International in Lebanon for two years following her graduate school education.[3] She had trouble getting a job in journalism initially in the 1970s because, as she was told by editors, she didn't have any experience and "they didn’t hire women."[4] She created a role for herself being a local expert, assisting well-known American and British correspondents who were in Beirut on short-term assignments.[4]
Boustany began freelancing for the Washington Post starting in 1979.[1] She was hired on as staff in 1988 at a time when many foreign correspondents had left Beirut for fear of being kidnapped.[4] In this situation, being female helped her, as she explained "It was believed...that it was safer for women because Islamic groups did not want to come in contact with females in a situation of captivity. We had tremendous access."[4] At the Post, she covered Lebanon’s war, Desert Storm, and the upheavals and struggles in Gaza and Algeria from her location in Beirut.[5] She was a correspondent in Algeria, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Kuwait, Iraq and Iran, speaking four languages: English; Arabic; French; and German.[6] She wrote a column, Diplomatic Dispatches, about Washington's diplomatic community, that was published twice weekly.[7]
She won the George Polk Award for Foreign Reporting in 1987 for her coverage of the plight of Palestinian refugees in Lebanon.[8][9] In 1992, she received a Distinguished Service award from the University of Wisconsin at Madison's School of Journalism and Mass Communication.[10] She left the Washington Post in 2008 after a nearly 30-year career, taking an early retirement package when the Post cut its staffing by 10%.[11]
She was a Writer-in-Residence Fellow for the year 2009-2010 at the Issam Fares Institute for Public Policy and International Affairs at the American University of Beirut.[3] She currently teaches journalism at the American University of Beirut.[4] She serves on the board of directors of the Beirut Museum of Art.[12]