Ash-har Quraishi (born January 5, 1975) (pron. Usher Ker-AY=Shee) is an American

broadcast Broadcasting is the distribution of audio or video content to a dispersed audience via any electronic mass communications medium, but typically one using the electromagnetic spectrum (radio waves), in a one-to-many model. Broadcasting began wi ...

journalist A journalist is an individual that collects/gathers information in form of text, audio, or pictures, processes them into a news-worthy form, and disseminates it to the public. The act or process mainly done by the journalist is called journalism ...

and national consumer correspondent for

CBS News CBS News is the news division of the American television and radio service CBS. CBS News television programs include the ''CBS Evening News'', '' CBS Mornings'', news magazine programs '' CBS News Sunday Morning'', '' 60 Minutes'', and '' 48 ...

. He is a former reporter for

WMAQ-TV WMAQ-TV (channel 5) is a television station in Chicago, Illinois, United States, airing programming from the NBC network. It is owned and operated by the network's NBC Owned Television Stations division alongside Telemundo outlet WSNS-TV (ch ...

in Chicago. He was previously the chief Midwest correspondent for now-defunct Al Jazeera America at its Chicago Bureau. He has served as

CNN CNN (Cable News Network) is a multinational cable news channel headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, U.S. Founded in 1980 by American media proprietor Ted Turner and Reese Schonfeld as a 24-hour cable news channel, and presently owned by t ...

's bureau chief in

Islamabad Islamabad (; ur, , ) is the capital city of Pakistan. It is the country's ninth-most populous city, with a population of over 1.2 million people, and is federally administered by the Pakistani government as part of the Islamabad Capital ...

. He later worked for

WTTW WTTW (channel 11) is a PBS member television station in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Owned by not-for-profit broadcaster Window to the World Communications, Inc., it is sister to commercial classical music radio station WFMT (98.7 FM). T ...

-TV in Chicago and for the Chicago News Cooperative. He was born in Chicago.

Early life and education

A Chicago native of Indian descent, Quraishi graduated from Von Steuben High School in Chicago and from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

Career

CNN

Quraishi served as

's Islamabad Bureau Chief covering news from across

Pakistan Pakistan ( ur, ), officially the Islamic Republic of Pakistan ( ur, , label=none), is a country in South Asia. It is the world's fifth-most populous country, with a population of almost 243 million people, and has the world's second-lar ...

, based there within days of the 9/11 attacks. In 2001 At the age of 26 he was CNN's youngest International Bureau Chief. While at the network he reported on political and military tensions between nuclear neighbors

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

and Pakistan and the hunt for

Osama Bin Laden Osama bin Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden (10 March 1957 – 2 May 2011) was a Saudi-born extremist militant who founded al-Qaeda and served as its leader from 1988 until his death in 2011. Ideologically a pan-Islamist, his group is designated a ...

on the volatile Pakistan/Afghanistan border. He covered the 2002 kidnapping and murder of ''

The Wall Street Journal ''The Wall Street Journal'' is an American business-focused, international daily newspaper based in New York City, with international editions also available in Chinese and Japanese. The ''Journal'', along with its Asian editions, is published ...

'' reporter

Daniel Pearl Daniel Pearl (October 10, 1963 – February 1, 2002) was an American journalist who worked for '' The Wall Street Journal.'' He was kidnapped and later decapitated by terrorists in Pakistan.' Pearl was born in Princeton, New Jersey, and ...

, providing live reports from the port city of

Karachi Karachi (; ur, ; ; ) is the most populous city in Pakistan and 12th most populous city in the world, with a population of over 20 million. It is situated at the southern tip of the country along the Arabian Sea coast. It is the former ...

. He was live from the capital of Islamabad minutes after the bombing of a Protestant church within the diplomatic enclave. Quraishi also covered the 2002 Pakistani elections and was the first western journalist to report the capture of suspected 9/11 planner

Khalid Shaikh Mohammed Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (sometimes also spelled Shaikh; also known by at least 50 pseudonyms; born March 1, 1964 or April 14, 1965) is a Pakistani Islamist militant held by the United States at the Guantanamo Bay detention camp under terrorism-r ...

. Following the capture, Quraishi conducted an exclusive one-on-one interview with Pakistani President

Pervez Musharraf General Pervez Musharraf ( ur, , Parvez Muśharraf; born 11 August 1943) is a former Pakistani politician and four-star general of the Pakistan Army who became the tenth president of Pakistan after the successful military takeover of the ...

. Quraishi was honored by the South Asian Journalists Association for his coverage of the 2002 parliamentary elections. In 2004 he was named one of the top 50 South Asian Global Achievers in Mass Media by Triangle Media Group.

NSA wiretapping

Quraishi was one of several journalists whose names were listed in a lawsuit filed by the

American Civil Liberties Union The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) is a nonprofit organization founded in 1920 "to defend and preserve the individual rights and liberties guaranteed to every person in this country by the Constitution and laws of the United States". ...

against the

NSA The National Security Agency (NSA) is a national-level intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense, under the authority of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). The NSA is responsible for global monitoring, collectio ...

for illegal

wiretap Telephone tapping (also wire tapping or wiretapping in American English) is the monitoring of telephone and Internet-based conversations by a third party, often by covert means. The wire tap received its name because, historically, the monitori ...

s. The ACLU accused the

National Security Agency The National Security Agency (NSA) is a national-level intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense, under the authority of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). The NSA is responsible for global monitoring, collectio ...

Central Security Service The Central Security Service (CSS) is a combat support agency of the United States Department of Defense which was established in 1972 to integrate the National Security Agency (NSA) and the Service Cryptologic Components (SCC) of the United St ...

and Lt. General Keith B. Alexander, director of the

, of illegally

wiretapping Telephone tapping (also wire tapping or wiretapping in American English) is the monitoring of telephone and Internet-based conversations by a third party, often by covert means. The wire tap received its name because, historically, the monitori ...

conversations and monitoring e-mails between members of its organization and members of the media, including Quraishi. At the time Quraishi was reporting on a story about "special interest" detainees who had been detained and deported even though they had not been charged with any terrorist related activities.

KCTV

Quraishi next was Chief Investigative Reporter for

CBS CBS Broadcasting Inc., commonly shortened to CBS, the abbreviation of its former legal name Columbia Broadcasting System, is an American commercial broadcast television and radio network serving as the flagship property of the CBS Entertainme ...

affiliate

KCTV KCTV (channel 5) is a television station in Kansas City, Missouri, United States, affiliated with CBS. It is owned by Gray Television alongside MyNetworkTV affiliate KSMO-TV (channel 62). Both stations share studios on Shawnee Mission Parkway ...

based in

Kansas City The Kansas City metropolitan area is a bi-state metropolitan area anchored by Kansas City, Missouri. Its 14 counties straddle the border between the U.S. states of Missouri (9 counties) and Kansas (5 counties). With and a population of more ...

. His reports have resulted in changes in police complaint procedures and changes in recruitment policies for the Missouri

National Guard National Guard is the name used by a wide variety of current and historical uniformed organizations in different countries. The original National Guard was formed during the French Revolution around a cadre of defectors from the French Guards. N ...

. His report on intimidation inside local police stations earned him a 2007 Regional Edward R. Murrow Award for investigative reporting. His investigations have been honored by the

Society of Professional Journalists The Society of Professional Journalists (SPJ), formerly known as Sigma Delta Chi, is the oldest organization representing journalists in the United States. It was established on April 17, 1909, at DePauw University,2009 SPJ Annual Report, letter ...

, The Kansas City Press Club, The South Asian Journalists Association and The

National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences The National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences (NATAS) is an American professional service organization founded in 1955 for "the advancement of the arts and sciences of television and the promotion of creative leadership for artistic, edu ...

. In 2010, he was awarded two National Headliner Awards for his reporting and was also an

Investigative Reporters and Editors Investigative Reporters and Editors, Inc. (IRE) is a nonprofit organization that focuses on improving the quality of journalism, in particular investigative journalism. Formed in 1975, it presents the IRE Awards and holds conferences and training ...

(IRE) award finalist. He is a four-time Emmy winner and ten-time nominee for feature, specialty and investigative reporting. Since joining KCTV5, he has exposed sexual predators online, weak sentencing for child pornography convicts, serious security vulnerabilities in airport security and the ability of bad physicians to move from state to state, leaving behind serious malpractice histories. Quraishi was investigated by the

Transportation Security Administration The Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is an agency of the United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) that has authority over the security of transportation systems within, and connecting to the United States. It was created ...

(TSA) under the

Department of Homeland Security The United States Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is the U.S. federal executive department responsible for public security, roughly comparable to the interior or home ministries of other countries. Its stated missions involve anti-terr ...

for a series of reports exposing vulnerabilities in aviation security. The TSA investigation was later dropped and the series earned Quraishi a 2009 Edward R. Murrow Award. He left KCTV in December 2009.

WTTW and the Chicago News Cooperative

On March 16, 2010, Chicago public television station

and the Chicago News Cooperative announced the hiring of Quraishi as a multimedia correspondent and content producer who will alternate working for WTTW and the CNC each week. His duties included reporting for WTTW's "Chicago Tonight" program and its website, writing for the Chicago News Cooperative's pages in ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...

'', writing for the cooperative's website and helping to train cooperative employees in using video. He left the CNC to become a full-time correspondent for Chicago Tonight in April 2011.

Al Jazeera America

On July 30, 2013 it was announced Quraishi was hired by the now-defunct Al Jazeera America to serve as its chief correspondent for its Chicago bureau. While covering the Ferguson protests in 2014, Ferguson police department shot rubber bullets and

tear gas Tear gas, also known as a lachrymator agent or lachrymator (), sometimes colloquially known as "mace" after the early commercial aerosol, is a chemical weapon that stimulates the nerves of the lacrimal gland in the eye to produce tears. In ad ...

at an AJAM news crew setting up for a live shot including correspondent Quraishi, causing them to abandon their recording equipment and run to safety. Other incidents including the arrests of two print journalists for

The Washington Post ''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large nat ...

and

The Huffington Post ''HuffPost'' (formerly ''The Huffington Post'' until 2017 and sometimes abbreviated ''HuffPo'') is an American progressive news website, with localized and international editions. The site offers news, satire, blogs, and original content, and ...

also occurred during the same time period. All the incidents were considered attacks on press freedom by the local and county police and led to the state police being put in charge as well as comments by President

Barack Obama Barack Hussein Obama II ( ; born August 4, 1961) is an American politician who served as the 44th president of the United States from 2009 to 2017. A member of the Democratic Party, Obama was the first African-American president of the U ...

denouncing the actions.

References

United States Department of State
*https://web.archive.org/web/20150110014657/http://www.saja.org/events/awardsarchive.html *https://web.archive.org/web/20080213054234/http://archives.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/asiapcf/south/03/17/quraishi.otsc/index.html *https://web.archive.org/web/20071225190615/http://www.kctv5.com/bios/13440216/detail.html *https://web.archive.org/web/20080117185127/http://www.saja.org/quraishi.html *https://web.archive.org/web/20071009085300/http://trianglemediagroup.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=15&Itemid=30 *http://archives.cnn.com/TRANSCRIPTS/0208/09/ltm.10.html *http://www.accessmylibrary.com/coms2/summary_0286-4333476_ITM *http://www.aclu.org/images/nsaspying/asset_upload_file137_23491.pdf *https://web.archive.org/web/20081202185055/http://www.kctv5.com/investigations/16276120/detail.html *http://timeoutchicago.com/arts-culture/chicago-media-blog/14771893/split-ends-wttw-raises-part-time-reporter-to-full-time-corr {{DEFAULTSORT:Quraishi, Ash-Har CNN people Al Jazeera people American television journalists Living people 1975 births American male journalists