Who is Essam Al-Ghalib?

Answer 1

Essam Al-Ghalib is a Saudi journalist. He began his career in Saudi Arabia in 2002 after returning from the United States where he studied Mass Communication and Media Management.

Al-Ghalib is best known for his reports from southern Iraq and Baghdad in 2003 where he was a war correspondent for Saudi English newspaper, Arab News.

He was the first Saudi journalist to enter Iraq from Kuwait during the invasion.

He survived being shot at, beaten, and kidnapped for several hours by bandits near Al Musyaeb, Iraq. He was robbed of all his equipment and belongings and suffered minor injuries in the assault.

From February of 2008 to November of 2011, Al-Ghalib was with the Abu Dhabi based, The National newspaper reporting from Al Ain, Abu Dhabi and Dubai. While there he covered numerous beats over a four year period including the police, judicial, civil defense and transportation beats.

Al-Ghalib was born in Cairo in September of 1972. He lived there for 9 years until his family moved to California.

In California, Al-Ghalib studied at Nativity School and Woodside Priory until he went to the UK in 1986. There he studied at Dean Close School in Cheltenham and at Sherborne School International Study Centre in Sherborne.

He returned to the USA in 1991 where he attended Menlo College in Atherton where he graduated in 1996 with a Bachelor's Degree in Mass Communications and Media Management. While in college he was a police cadet and drove a taxi. Later he worked as a bail enforcement agent and a loss prevention officer.

In 2002, he returned to Saudi Arabia from the United States to join Arab News.

He has since been interviewed on CNN, Sky News, Canadian Television, and the BBC. He has done production work for CNN, Channel 4 News UK, National Geographic, Exandas Documentaries as well as the Oprah Winfrey Show.

In June of 2012, Al-Ghalib became managing editor of the Saudi English language daily newspaper, Arab News. He remained in that post for less than three months. He was dismissed the day and article he wrote about human rights abuses was published, however Al-Ghalib cannot specifically cite that the article was the reason for his dismissal.

Since his dismissal, he has moved to Istanbul, Turkey, where he became a primary school English teacher, hired at a prestigious Turkish Oxford Quality school.

"There is nothing more meaningful in life than to influence young minds," he said.

In 2013, Al-Ghalib was in Istanbul for the Summer's riots and documented the violence on video. That footage among others can be viewed on his YouTube channel bearing his name.

Since leaving Istanbul in December of 2013, Al-Ghalib has moved to Saudi Arabia where he started ThirdEyeKSA, a foreign news media production and services company, that lists CNN, the BBC, CBS News, Danish TV2 and Bloomberg and others as its clients.

Al-Ghalib is also with Saudia Radio (Ministry of Culture and Information / Saudi Broadcasting Corporation) which is Saudi Arabia's only English language radio station. He produces On The Spot and is co-host of 'That Radio Show', with Othman Dahlawi.