Nihal Alaqabawy is an Egyptian bilingual broadcast journalist who has produced newscasts in both English and Arabic professionally since 1995. She witnessed Egypt’s political change holding leading positions in Television news from 2008 to 2016.
As an English news reporter, producer, and anchor at Nile TV International, the first Egyptian news channel broadcasting in English, French and Hebrew, she was one of the news channel’s establishing team. In 2003, Nihal co-hosted the award-winning episode of Nile TV’s Live current affairs show “Open to Question.” She interviewed the British ambassador to Egypt, who later became ruler of Basra, discussing Iraq and connecting the guest with live audience questions. As head of news at Nile TV International, she led the team in launching the channel’s news website in all three languages in January 2011.
In April 2011, she joined the five-member team that launched one of Egypt’s private well known television networks, serving as the director of programming and news in CBC- Egypt. CBC was awarded best news coverage in Egypt twice during her service. The network is well known for its program “Elbernameg” presented by Bassem Youssef, following the same format as The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. She later served as director of programming in Alghad news channel while rebranding and establishing a new line of strategy and programming for the news channel.
Though an accounting major, Nihal followed her passion for television journalism. She has a graduate diploma in Television from Cairo University and earned her Master of Arts in Television and Multimedia Journalism in 2010 from the American University in Cairo (AUC). She also worked as an executive producer for Nile News and TEN channels. Nihal’s professional and technical skills include camera framing and video editing using final cut and Adobe Premiere Pro as well as newsroom tools like ENPS and INEWS. In 2016, she taught as a professor of practice at the Kamal Adham Center for Journalism at AUC, TKH- Coventry University- Egypt, and MTI- Wales University- Egypt as well as CIC - Cape Breton University in Egypt.
Her research interests include news television, media freedom and democracy, public and private media organizations, public interest journalism, media business models, media literacy, the spread of misinformation, newsrooms’ settings and media strategies and their effect on scheduling and programming. Her first submitted research is “Factors Affecting Satire Production in Political Transitional Settings: The Case Study of Elbernameg TV Show.”
As a PhD student, Nihal is interested in investigating media business models' effects on news framing during the period of 2011 to 2015 in Egypt.