Anisa Mehdi: The Journey to Pilgrimage

Anisa Mehdi will talk about how her own faith journey led her to an unexpected beat in broadcast news: covering Islam.
Emmy Award-winning journalist and filmmaker Anisa Mehdi is a pioneer whose work in mainstream American broadcast news spans three decades. Inspired by her pioneering father Dr. Mohammad T. Mehdi’s efforts to amplify the story of Palestine in the USA from the 1960s-1990s, and irked by media bias against that story, she determined to join the corps of reporters and contribute to the conversation on how to cover Arab and Muslim stories both at home and abroad. She has worked for CBS News, New York; Eyewitness News, Boston; PBS; ABC News “Nightline” and National Geographic Television & Film, teaming with Bill Moyers, Ted Koppel, Meredith Vieira, Tom Bettag, John Bredar, Maurice Murad and others. During her career Anisa helped newsrooms expand their roster of contacts to include diverse American Muslim scholars of Islam and American Arab experts on the Middle East. Anisa’s award-winning television stories on the arts forged new ground for minority beat reporters in the USA. She is the first American woman to cover the Hajj pilgrimage for broadcast. “Inside Mecca,” her acclaimed documentary film on the Hajj, is a staple in religious studies classes across the country. Her most recent film premiered on PBS nationwide in December 2014.
Anisa Mehdi was a 2009-2010 Fulbright Scholar in Jordan. She consults to the Doris Duke Foundation for Islamic Art and teaches documentary film at Seton Hall University. Anisa holds degrees from Wellesley College and the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. She is a trustee of the Esalen Institute and vice chair of the Abraham Path Initiative. Currently an independent producer/director, educator, and writer, Anisa is recognized by the New Jersey Society of Professional Journalists for her insights: “Current events reporting often confuses faith, culture, and politics. Anisa Mehdi helps sort them out.”