Mehdi Raza Hasan is a British-American broadcaster and author. He presented The Mehdi Hasan Showon Peacock since October 2020 and on MSNBC from February 2021 until the show's cancellation in November 2023. A graduate of Christ Church, Oxford, Hasan began his television career as a researcher and then producer on ITV's Jonathan Dimbleby programme. Following a stint on the BBC's The Politics Show he became deputy executive producer on Sky's breakfast show Sunrise before moving to Channel 4 as their editor of news and current affairs. In 2009 he was appointed senior editor for politics at the New Statesman. In 2012 he became a presenter on Al Jazeera's English news channel, and in 2015 moved to Washington, D.C. to work full-time for Al Jazeera on UpFront and host the Deconstructed podcast produced by the online publication The Intercept from 2018 to 2020. Hasan is the author of Win Every Argument, and the co-author of a biography of former Labour Party leader Ed Miliband. He was formerly the political editor of the UK edition of The Huffington Post and the presenter of the Al Jazeera English shows: The Café, Head to Head and UpFront.
Early life and education
Mehdi Raza Hasan was born in Swindon to immigrant Indian Hyderabadi Muslim parents from the city of Hyderabad in Andhra Pradesh, South India (now in Telangana). Hasan was privately educated at Merchant Taylors' School, Northwood, a day independent school for boys at Sandy Lodge in the Three Rivers District of Hertfordshire, near the town of Northwood in North West London. He then attended Christ Church, Oxford, where he read Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE), and graduated in 2000.
Career
Hasan worked as a researcher and then producer on ITV's Jonathan Dimbleby programme, with a brief period in between on BBC One's The Politics Show. Following this, he became deputy executive producer on Sky's breakfast show Sunrise before moving to Channel 4 as their editor of news and current affairs. He was appointed senior editor for politics at the New Statesman in late spring of 2009, where he stayed until May 2012, then becoming political director of The Huffington Post website. Hasan became a presenter on Al Jazeera's English news channel in May 2012. Hasan has appeared (six times) on the BBC's Question Time programme, and the Sunday morning programmes The Big Questions and Sunday Morning Live. In 2013, Hasan took part in a debate at the Oxford Union to consider whether Islam is a peaceful religion. Hasan, who is an Ithna’Asheri Shia Muslim, vouched for Islam as a religion of peace, citing political and cultural reasons for violence in Muslim majority countries, as opposed to holding the religion of Islam responsible. In the vote on the motion, the house affirmed with Hasan and the other proposers that Islam is a religion of peace with 286 votes in favor and 168 votes against. Recorded at the Oxford Union, Head to Head was a programme on Al Jazeera English in which Hasan interviewed public figures; it had run for three series by December 2014. Since 2015, working full-time for the network in Washington, D.C., Hasan has hosted a weekly interview and discussion programme. Hasan began a podcast in 2018 entitled Deconstructed, produced by the investigative journalism website The Intercept. On air, Hasan would discuss recent news topics and host guests.
Notable topics covered on the podcast include police brutality, inequality, QAnon, and Donald Trump's activity on Twitter. Notable podcast guests have included Noam Chomsky, Ilhan Omar, and Bernie Sanders. On 2 October 2020, Hasan announced that he would no longer host the show as part of his move to host The Mehdi Hasan Show on NBC's new streaming service, Peacock. Hasan became a naturalized citizen of the United States on 9 October 2020, in time to vote in the 2020 United States presidential election. Hasan currently hosts The Mehdi Hasan Show on the online service Peacock since Oct 2020 airing weeknights at 7 pm Eastern.[4] Notable guests on The Mehdi Hasan Show have included Mark Ruffalo, Jon Stewart, John Bolton, Keith Ellison, Ro Khanna, John Legend, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. In March 2021, Hasan launched the same show on MSNBC every Sunday evening. He is also the fill-in host on MSNBC's All In with Chris Hayes, The Rachel Maddow Show, The 11th Hour with Stephanie Ruhle and The Last Word with Lawrence O'Donnell. During the 2023 Israel–Hamas war, MSNBC removed Hasan and two other Muslim broadcasters, Ayman Mohyeldin and Ali Velshi, from anchoring shows on its network. NBC stated the shifts were coincidental and not due to any supposed pro-Palestinian sentiment. On November 30, 2023, it was announced that Hasan's MSNBC and Peacock shows would end, although Hasan himself would remain at the network as a political analyst and fill in host.
Awards
In January 2014, Hasan was awarded the Services to Media award at the British Muslim Awards. In 2017, he was named European Young Leader by the Brussels-based Friends of Europe think tank.
In 2019, Hasan won the Society of Professional Journalists' Sigma Delta Chi Award for Online Column Writing.
Courtesy : Wikipedia
0 Comments