World Press Freedom Day 2017

A founder and executive director of Arab Reporters for Investigative Journalism (ARIJ) since 2005, Rana Sabbagh has dedicated the last ‎‎33‎‏ ‏years of her career as a journalist, columnist and media trainer to support free speech, independent media and human rights. She helped set up ARIJ, a media support ‎organization spreading the culture of “accountability journalism” in newsrooms and among media professors and ‎students in Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt, Iraq, Yemen, Palestine, Bahrain and Tunisia. Sabbagh, 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 also helped establish Jordan's newspaper Al-Ghad (2003-2004).

In addition to her post at ARIJ, she is representative for the Middle East and North Africa on the first elected board of directors of the Global Investigative Journalism Network (GIJN). She also is the former Jordan correspondent for The Times (of London), a regular columnist for Al-Hayat and Al-Ghad as well as media consultant/trainer for the Thomson Reuters Foundation.