Pakistani American Journalist Asma Khalid to Join ABC News’ Political Team as Contributor
- A White House correspondent for NPR, she is also co-host of the “NPR Politics Podcast.”
Journalist Asma Khalid is joining ABC News’ political team as a contributor, the network announced today. In addition to being a White House correspondent for NPR, she is also co-host of the “NPR Politics Podcast.”
The Pakistani American joined NPR’s Washington team in 2016 to focus on the intersection of demographics and politics, according to the radio’s website. Describing her as “a bit of a campaign-trail addict,” NPR notes that Khalid has reported on the 2014, 2016, 2018 and 2020 elections. “Her reporting often dives into the political, cultural and racial divides in the country,” the radio station adds.
Before joining NPR’s political team, she was a reporter for Boston’s NPR station WBUR, where she covered the Boston Marathon bombings. “She had joined the network just a few weeks prior, but went on to report on the bombings, the victims, and the reverberations throughout the city,” NPR said. Later, she led a new business and technology team at the station that reported on the future of work.
In an interview with NPR during the AAPI Heritage Month in May, Khalid talked about how her heritage influences her reporting. Describing herself as “ethnically Pakistani and Indian,” she mentioned how t”here are so many different things” that affect her reporting. “Being from Indiana, definitely affected the fact that I covered politics in 2016. Being Muslim definitely affected all of that too. But being SouthAsian affects it.”
Khalid’s family lived in India, but during the Partition her grandmother’s family moved to Pakistan. Hence, while covering American politics, she has “been obsessed with this idea of how people who live side by side for generations, which was the case in India; can suddenly decide that’s no longer possible.” She thinks it is “a big part of my framing of American politics comes from the idea of having seen or having heard stories of the dangers of a breakdown of civil society.”
A native of Crown Point, Indiana, Khalid is a graduate of Indiana University in Bloomington. She has also studied at the University of Cambridge, the London School of Economics, the American University in Beirut and Middlebury College’s Arabic school.
She got her start in journalism in her home state of Indiana, but she fell in love with radio through an internship at the BBC Newshour in London during graduate school. She’s been a guest on numerous TV programs. Her reporting has been recognized with the Missouri Honor Medal for Distinguished Service in Journalism, as well as awards from the Society of Professional Journalists and the Gracie Award.
(Top photo, Asma, Courtesy, Ariel Zambelich/NPR)