Rania Khalek Biography, Age, Net worth, Journalist, Political views, Reception, Russia
Rania Khalek Biography
Rania Khalek is a Lebanese American journalist and political activist. She has written for politically progressive/left-wing publications, including The Nation, The Intercept, Al Jazeera, Salon, Vice, AlterNet, Mondoweiss, and Truthout. In 2017 she co-hosted the podcast show of Unauthorized Disclosure with Kevin Gosztola at Shadowproof. She previously served as an associate editor for the pro-Palestinian news website The Electronic Intifada.
Rania Khalek Age
Rania Khalek was born in 1982 in New York, New York, United States. She is 37 years old as of 2019.
Rania Khalek Net worth
Rania Khalek earns her income from her businesses and other related organizations. She also earns her income from her work as a journalist and political activist. She also earns her income from other related government relations. She has an estimated net worth of $3 million dollars.
Rania Khalek Education
Rania Khalek graduated from Moscow Art Theatre. She then attended Hunter College.
Rania Khalek Image
Rania Khalek Journalist
Rania Khalek began her journalism career after her University education. She has reported on the Israel-Palestine conflict and the Israeli occupation of the West Bank, Islamophobia, the Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen, the Syrian Civil War, United States foreign policy in the Middle East, US presidential elections and the United States criminal justice system.
She contributed to AlterNet from 2011 to 2017. Some of her work was published as part of The Grayzone Project. Khalek contributed to Truthout between 2012 and 2014. She had a column for Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR)’s magazine, Extra!, from 2013-2015. She launched the weekly podcast, “Unauthorized Disclosure,” with Gosztola in 2014.
Khalek was a contributor to The Electronic Intifada from 2013-2016. She served on the editorial board for a few years but stepped down from her position in October 2016. She has appeared on Al Jazeera English and RT America, and in 2017, she briefly was part of Redfish.[citation needed] Khalek has also appeared on The Majority Report with Sam Seder and The Jimmy Dore Show
Khalek became a contributor for Maffick Media’s “In the Now” video channels. Maffick receives funding from its parent company, Ruptly, in Berlin. RT is a subsidiary of ANO TV Navasti in Moscow, which is the umbrella non-profit media organization that is funded by the Russian government. At Khalek’s personal website, “Dispatches From the Underclass,” Khalek posts about her current work. It features links to her freelance journalism from as early as 2012.
Rania Khalek Political views
Rania Khalek called Wahhabism a “toxic and hateful religion practiced in Saudi Arabia”. She has criticized U.S.-Saudi Arabia alliance and U.S. involvement in the Saudi Arabian-led intervention in Yemen.
During the 2016 Presidential campaign, Khalek wrote that Donald Trump “is hardly the candidate of peace. Nor is he a credible messenger.
He’s advocated for killing the families of terrorists, endorses torture, and in his tirade against Clinton, he applauded Saddam Hussein for executing people without trial…Trump did not oppose the invasion [of Iraq] at the time”.
She has also criticized Hillary Clinton and her support for the Iraq War and NATO-led military intervention in Libya, and Clinton’s support of dictatorships that rule the Persian Gulf monarchies.
In 2016 Khalek and other pro-Palestinian activists disrupted a speech at Washington, D.C.’s Newseum given by Avital Leibovich, a retired colonel in the Israel Defense Forces and director of the Jerusalem office of the American Jewish Committee.
Rania Khalek Reception
The Jerusalem Post called Khalek “controversial” after a brief Twitter storm[vague] erupted in 2019 when Ilhan Omar, a member of Congress, retweeted Khalek, who in turn defended Omar for her opposition to perceived U.S. efforts to change the government of Venezuela.
During the 2016 presidential campaign, after Khalek wrote that “Clinton is also dangerous to world stability. And unlike Trump, she has the blood on her hands to prove it,” James Kirchick described Khalek as one of a group of progressives who, in Kirchick’s opinion, were “behaving like Weimar-era German communists, who, on Joseph Stalin’s orders, attacked Social Democrats as “social fascists” rather than battle Nazi brown-shirts.”
With several other left-wing journalists, Khalek was mentioned in an article the Southern Poverty Law Center retracted after receiving complaints from those journalists that the article falsely portrayed them as “white supremacists, fascists, anti-Semites, and engaging in a conspiracy with the Putin regime to promote such views”; the Center’s letter explaining its retraction of the article specifically apologized to Khalek and other journalists who felt they had been falsely portrayed.
According to Jonathan Marks, a professor of political science at Ursinus College, Khalek is “not a marginal figure” within the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions of Israel movement. She has criticized The Nation magazine on the grounds that while the magazine has published numerous articles in support of the Palestinian cause, it nonetheless “reinforces” the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian Territories and Israel’s treatment of Palestinians “by privileging Jewish voices over Palestinian ones.”
The critic of Israel policy Eric Alterman took issue with Khalek’s statement, accusing her of antisemitic implication, “have you noticed what the magazine’s real problem is? Too many Jews!” In contrast, CounterPunch has praised Khalek for her “honest reporting on Israel and the military”
She wrote that al-Qaeda affiliates in Syria played a significant role in the armed rebellion against the Assad regime and “while many Syrians who first engaged in peaceful protest later turned to arms in the face of the regime’s crackdown, others continue to do non-violent political work.” The Israeli newspaper Haaretz accused Khalek of “publishing smear attacks against NGOs, medics, journalists, first responders and Syrian civil society groups” opposing the Assad regime during the Syrian Civil War.
Rania Khalek Russia
Rania Khalek reported that CNN went in search of a story about a Russian-funded digital media project that produces viral videos aimed at undermining American democracy. When CNN journalists could not find what they were looking for, they effectively manufactured the news by giving Facebook a pretext for removing the project’s pages used to share videos. Now, the cable news network had its story.
Four CNN journalists worked on the report, “Russia is backing a viral video company aimed at American millennials.” It appeared online late in the day on February 15 and broke the news that Maffick Media had their Facebook pages for three video channels suspended. Maffick also produces In The Now, which Facebook took down as well.
Facebook never required pages to include information about their parent companies nor has the social media company ever labeled state-sponsored media, which CNN acknowledged. Yet, since the project involves funding from Russian state media, CNN believed Facebook may want to require the pages to disclose such details. CNN contacted Facebook on February 13, and Facebook informed CNN they were “contemplating doing something about labeling state-funded media,” according to Donie O’Sullivan, a CNN reporter who worked on the story.
The media organization held its story until Facebook took action. Maffick produces three video channels Back then, which explores the history of Western imperialism, Waste-Ed, which covers environmental issues, including climate change, and Soapbox, which covers politics and current events. As O’Sullivan said during an interview on CNN,
“The content was pretty critical of the U.S government, of U.S mainstream media, but nothing that would be totally out of the ordinary necessarily.” Videos made a “lot of legitimate arguments,” and they “weren’t necessarily really hiding their Russian ties.” “If you were to start Googling these pages, you could quickly work it back to see,” O’Sullivan added.
Journalist Rania Khalek, who produces videos for Soapbox, was interviewed by CNN, along with Maffick Media chief operating officer J. Ray Sparks. The interview took place in Berlin on February 11. However, CNN did not initially contact them. “CNN was contacting peripheral employees, some of the people in the U.S., one of the camera people that I worked with.
They contacted her,” Khalek shared. “And they actually lied to [this person] and told her they had already spoken to me when they had not.” According to Khalek, CNN seemed to be interested in whether any Maffick employees were difficult to work with, whether employees or contractors were paid decently, and whether they were leery of the stories they were asked to cover.
J. Ray Sparks contacted CNN to inform them that they were aware the news network was attempting to dig up dirt. Maffick made CEO Anissa Naouai, Khalek, and Sparks available to CNN in the interest of transparency, even though it was clear journalists were looking for material for a hit piece on the project. Shadowproof was provided with a copy of the unedited interview that CNN conducted with Khalek and Sparks.
