Roula Khalaf, journalist

0:00Hello, I'm Lauren Laverne and this is the Desert Island Discs podcast from BBC Radio 4. Every week I ask my guests to choose the eight tracks, book and luxury, that they'd want to take with them if they were cast away to a desert island. For rights reasons, the music's shorter than on the original broadcast, but you can find a version with longer music tracks on BBC Sounds. Listeners will also get access to episodes 28 days earlier than everyone else. I hope you enjoy listening.

0:45My cast away this week is the journalist Rula Khalaf. She's the editor of the Financial Times, august bible of city traders, business leaders and policy makers. These are challenging times for traditional newspapers. Advertising revenues falling and digital technology and social media have transformed how people consume news and information. An increasingly fractured media landscape is also having an impact on the type of stories that cut through. But she's no stranger to challenge. She was born in Beirut and grew up during the height of the Lebanese Civil War. Fascinated by the foreign correspondents who stayed at the nearby Commodore Hotel, She set her heart on becoming a journalist like them and moved to the US, where she started her career at Forbes magazine in New York.

1:31She got her first scoop exposing the business practices of Jordan Belfort, the so-called Wolf of Wall Street. Do look out for the character based on her in Martin Scorsese's biopic. She joined the FT in 1995 as a foreign correspondent. Her beats included Syria, Iran, Iraq and covering the Arab Spring. In 2020, she became the paper's editor-in-chief, managing over 600 journalists around the world, whilst leading the charge to win over new readers beyond the boardroom. She says, glamorous is not the word that I would use for my job. It's fulfilling, it's fascinating, it's exciting. But we're very calm here, calm and professional, and always have been.

2:10Rula Khalaf, welcome to Desert Island Discs. Thank you for having me. So colleagues and fellow journalists have described you as a very hands-on editor. How often do you find yourself in the newsroom? Every day, possibly every hour. And when they describe me as a hands-on, I don't know whether, I mean, that's their nice way of describing me because they also describe me as very interventionist. Oh, so this could be double-edged. It is definitely double-edged. I think some of them like it. Others may think of, no, not again. And especially on stories that I know intimately. I think that I can be too much, but there's nothing like running a big story.

2:51I love the buzz of a newsroom, but I'm also, I think, a reporter at heart. And do you miss that? Do you miss being on the ground part of you? Definitely, especially in moments of big crises like, you know, a possible revolution in Iran. You know, I've covered other periods of unrest, but I can contribute differently today as well. So I'm reporting even if I'm not writing, I'm reporting and just running to the newsroom and telling other reporters what I just found or how I can help them. I see my job today as being sort of a support system for everybody else and might be able to reach people that they can't reach.

3:34What do you think is the biggest challenge for journalism today? Because you've got a very volatile kind of current events landscape and then also the platforms are changing too. So I tend to think of it as three forces that are challenging journalism today. The first force is something we were used to, which is the freedom of the media is under threat. But the freedom of the media is now under threat in more countries and, you know, including in the US, frankly, I have to worry about my correspondence in the US in a way that I never used to. Related to that is that the truth itself is challenged today.

4:13You can have different narratives about how you got to a certain situation or different opinions. But today, what we are witnessing is an attempt at creating a different narrative of the truth. And there are different narratives of the truth. And then you have all the economic headwinds and the technological headwinds. So on the economic side, as you know, a lot of local journalism has now disappeared because creating quality journalism is very expensive and they simply can't afford it anymore. And in an AI world, the truth is challenged, but there's also a threat of disintermediation. I'm sure that you've seen deep fakes everywhere on social media these days.

4:59So I think that this is a pivotal time and it's an existential time for journalism and for the media industry. So how do you respond to those many prongs of that challenge that's coming at you? Well, in some ways, we are lucky because trust, which I always say trust is really our currency. So I think that you have to maintain extremely, extremely high standards in order to protect that trust. Well, Rula, it is time to go to your music. Tell me about your first. The first one is a Genesis song. I associate Genesis, Jethro Tull, Dire Straits, very much with teenage angst. And two of my best friends when I was a teenager growing up in Beirut, we had the Saturday afternoon sort of crying sessions where we would get together, talk about boys and, you know, our lives, our families.

6:01and, you know, one of us would end up crying. That was just kind of the rule. There's plenty to cry about when you're a teenage girl. You've just got to let the hormones out sometimes. So the one I picked is Misunderstanding. There must be some misunderstanding There must be some kind of mistake I waited in the rain for hours You were late Now it's not like me to say the right thing But you could have called to let me know Genesis and misunderstanding. So Rulakalaf, you were born in Beirut in 1965, the middle of three children. What are your memories of the city before the war broke out? Well, I was very young before the war broke out.

6:59And many of my memories of Beirut are very related to the war. But I have sort of snapshots in my head of picnics in the mountains with extended family. You know, my mother wearing this beautiful long green dress because, you know, my parents used to go to parties. And it was much later on that, you know, I knew that this was kind of the heyday of Lebanon, the Paris of the Middle East, the Switzerland of the Middle East. The thing I remember most is spending summers at my grandparents. You know, we call it the mountains. I mean, it's about 40 minutes from Beirut. So memories of childhood are very, very tied to that house, to, you know, the cat and the vine leaves.

7:50It's very sort of very basic. My memories are very, very basic of that time. It sounds peaceful, though, when you describe peaceful. Very peaceful. Yeah, happy. Very, very happy, very peaceful. So tell me more about your parents. Let's start with your mother, Therese. How would you describe her? my mother met my dad. She had a more important job than him. They worked in the same company and sort of lent him money at some point. And that's how they got together. But then when she had children, she gave up work and she was, the family was absolutely everything to her. And by family, I don't only mean, you know, my brothers and I, but my dad as well.

8:35who always had this joke that dad is home. That means that my mom is peeling an apple because my dad loved to have apples when he got home. But she was just a very, very kind and very protective mother to the point where, you know, I mean, I remember I was, I don't know, maybe 30 years old. I go home on holiday and she'd still give me sort of spending money. I mean, I was totally independent. Mom, I'm a war correspondent. Do you need spending money? And she'll put something in my pocket. She sounds wonderful. She was. Sadly, we lost her about 17 years ago. I'm sorry. I mean, she gave up working, as you say, when she had you.

9:20But she sounds like she was very determined that you would succeed. Oh, absolutely. She really drove me and wanted me to be absolutely, you know, independent. And you have to remember that when you grow up during a time of instability, you know, your parents don't know what's coming. And so they want to equip you best they can in order to, you know, sort of send you out into the world so that you can make it on your own. And what about your father, Abba? So he had a very senior job at the American Life Insurance Company. Tell me about it. Yes. So my dad was, during the day, he was sort of a manager and he also loved politics.

10:05And he was in government for a while when the Civil War broke out. He was economics minister. He was economics minister. And my father has been, you know, a huge influence on me and my brothers. He has an incredible presence. I mean, you see him, he walks into a room and people turn their heads. He's very tall, lanky, very good looking man. Also, you're smiling ear to ear. As soon as you started thinking about him, you just started beaming. Yes, I've just seen him two weeks ago. And it's, you know, one of the small pleasures of life that I can still, I call him every single day. And I think that my dad was always wise, but also extremely, extremely ethical.

10:51And he was also very attached to a secular version of Lebanon. Lebanon is a confessional system based on different religious groups. They get, it's like a pie and it's divided. So the president has to be a Christian, the Speaker of Parliament, a Shia Muslim, the Prime Minister, a Sunni. And the civil war was partly about this balance of power. There were a lot of other factors, but it is always the struggle in Lebanon is always over who gets a bigger share. And, you know, my father and a lot of other people, which is like a merit based system. And I think that is mainly what drove him into politics.

11:36Rula, it's time to go to the music. Your second choice today. What is disc number two and why are you taking it to the island? Disc number two is Dernière Danse by Indila. I became quite obsessed with the song more recently when I heard my son, my youngest son, who's 16, play it on the piano. So I started listening to it and I loved it. And I think one of the reasons is because it is about sort of dancing as an escape. And I have always felt that dancing is an escape. I don't know whether that's a remnant of that period. You mentioned in Lebanon the sort of the pre-civil war, but Lebanon also knows how to have a good time despite everything and sometimes because of the instability and the war.

12:30And, you know, I love dancing. And so it really spoke to me.

12:46Oh, my sweet suffering I remove the sky the day and night I dance with the wind and the rain A little love, a brown sugar And I dance with the sun Dernier danse in Dila. Rula Khalaf, in 1975, the 15-year Lebanese Civil War broke out. How did life change for you and your family? The first thing that changed is that we couldn't stay where we were living. It got to be too dangerous because we were very close to the Green Line, which separated East and West Beirut. And this is where you had a lot of the violence broke out. So we had to move and we went to stay with my grandparents, then rented a house near them.

13:40Then one night we were just dragged from there and we stayed in a villa in some kind of forest. I remember asking my dad once, were we squatting? Like, whose house is this? No, no, no, no, no, no. We called the owners and they said this was safe. And it got to a point where, you know, my dad decided that it was too dangerous. And so we moved to Egypt. We lived in Cairo. my dad had decided to stay in Beirut. And most of my memories there is my mom just being very worried about him. So he stayed behind. What was he doing? Was he able to work or was he engaged in politics? I remember he stayed in a hotel in Beirut.

14:25And because he'd been a government minister when the war broke out, I think that it was for both his sort of activities that he felt he had to stay. and he would come for periods of time. So we spent a year in Egypt, then we went back. We thought it was the end of the war. And, you know, every time we went back, we changed school. And then we were there for a few years and we had to move again. We went to Greece and we lived in Athens for a couple of years, then again went back thinking the war was over, new school. And the very same story. Yeah. I mean, that uncertainty must have been so difficult to manage for your parents, you know, three children to look after.

15:09Did you see their anxieties, their worry? I certainly saw my mother's worry. She had this kind of tick where her, you know, left eyebrow lifted. And she always also, I mean, I remember times when we were in Beirut where she would just like clean frantically, just clean, clean, clean. and for no apparent reason. So there was always, we always felt when my mom was anxious and we knew something was wrong. I think for children, especially when you're quite young, your stability and your home, your safety is really around your parents. If you're with your parents, then you feel safe. And it's the parents who worry about the rest.

15:51So I don't think that we felt unsafe, you know, Except, yes, there were times when she had to wake us up and we'd have to hide between walls. But otherwise, most of what I remember is just the anxiety of my mother rather than my own or my siblings. But that can be quite tricky to manage, can't it? Because as a kid, you're taking this in, but you can't do anything about it. So it definitely kind of must take a toll on you, have an effect on you. I mean, I wonder if you look back and you think, oh, that's why I do this. or is there anything that you have connected? Well, there are things I do and then there are things I feel.

16:29So things I do that I think are related to that time are I've got this habit of always sleeping on the side of the bed that's closest to the door. I know that that's related to the way I grew up. I have to sleep in pyjamas. I can't not sleep in pyjamas. Like I have to be ready. Ready to get out of bed at any moment. So I know that these are sort of practical things where it's less clear to me. And, you know, I haven't done any therapy, but I'm sure there is a, you know, psychological impact, what that psychological impact is. I've, you know, I've never really looked, frankly. I think it certainly made me a lot more resilient.

17:12I also feel that, you know, I'm not afraid of war. So I really am fearless when it comes to war. I'm I'm not afraid. And that has obviously helped me a lot in my job. At one point, you lived near the Commodore Hotel, where all the foreign correspondents who were covering the war stayed. When I say that name, you're smiling already. What memories does it conjure up for you? I knew of all the stories where, you know, militiamen would go in to meet journalists. And there was just something, I mean, perhaps stupidly, but something quite romantic about being a war correspondent. And so I think that contributed to what I then started to think I wanted to do.

17:55What captured you about it? What did that life seem to offer that you found attractive? To me, it was adventure. It was a different way of looking at the situation that we were in, which was a situation of war and conflict. And these were people who sort of came and went and they were writing about us, but they weren't really stuck there. They weren't really living it. Rula, it's time for some more music. Your third choice today. What are we going to hear next and why? This is a song called Ognia al-Bosta, the song of the bus. It's by Ziyad Rahbani. He's the son of the Lebanon's most famous singer, Fayrouz.

18:38He had a great influence on her. He was also very funny. And he had these plays that were, you know, they were mostly comedy. And this song comes out of one of these plays. And it talks about, in a way, I mean, never mentions the war. It's just about a trip on a bus. But to me, it is about the absurdity of living in war, normality and abnormality sort of coexisting. And this is how, you know, we all experienced the war. We had our normal life that was really, really abnormal.

19:36MUSIC PLAYS Ugniyata Ulb Busta by Ziyad Rahbani. Rula Khalaf was there a particular moment when you became aware of the power of words and storytelling? I think that moment came when I was at university and I had a professor by the name of John Keats who was encouraging us to just write feelings and connections. And I remember writing a piece. I didn't know whether I was a good writer. I knew I wanted to write, but I didn't know whether I could be a good writer. And I remember him talking to me after class one day and saying, this is very special. And it was, you know, it was a piece that was connected, obviously, to Lebanon.

20:31and the ability for me to sort of express myself. I mean, I'm not someone, notwithstanding the fact that I'm in front of you right now, I'm not someone who likes to talk about herself. So it was a kind of discovery for me that this is, you know, words are very important. They're an important tool. They're an important weapon. And you know what? I may have it. And so I think that was the moment. And I kept that piece. And I think it was about sort of the two sides of war, how war could also make you stronger. Living in war could also make you stronger. And I think perhaps that's why I've always carried that element of war with me rather than delving into what, you know, how traumatic it might have been.

21:16Every writer starts as a reader. Were you the kind of kid who was reading the newspaper, you know, listening to the news as well as reading books? I read the local newspapers. I think my first link to journalism was the fact that, you know, my dad is at heart a writer and did write regularly. He still writes from time to time. But it's also just the discussion at the dinner table, the fact that it was always about politics. But it was also the fact that news was so important to our lives. We'd have to listen to so many different radio stations. Everything was partisan. So you had to triangulate and try to figure out what was going on.

21:58It wasn't just one radio station that would inform you. You really had to listen to every single party's radio station. So this is what I grew up in, is this sort of thirst for information and this sort of family interest in politics and what it means. Your path to becoming a journalist wasn't straightforward. In 1983, you started a degree in architecture at the American University of Beirut. So why had you chosen to study architecture? Well, I wouldn't exactly say I chose to study architecture. Who chose me to study architecture? I didn't actually choose. But education and, you know, going to the best schools and the best universities, this was what my parents always thought about.

22:46And so it was always assumed I would go to the American University of Beirut. So I wanted to do communications and broadcast journalism. And there was no degree. You know, the American University of Beirut did not offer that degree. And my parents said, no, you have to, because otherwise you won't have a degree with which you may be able to then go abroad. So it has to be the American University of Beirut. So I just looked around and thought, well, that sounds creative, you know, architecture. It's the most creative I could find. So I did a year there. And then it was a very, very bad year in Lebanon.

23:24And so then, you know, my parents insisted that I had to go abroad. So your parents had moved to Cyprus by this point, I think. Yes. My younger brother went with them. My older brother went to the US for university. So you were there just, you know, 18? I was there with my grandparents. How was it? Oh, it was one of the best years of my life. I mean, you're on your own. Your grandparents are not asking what you're doing or where you are. I mean, there was a curfew in Lebanon and we never, ever abided by the curfew. What were you doing? How do you have normal kind of teenage nightlife and adventures?

24:02Because you're trying very hard to have a normal life. So you turned 18 round about that time. What did you do to mark the occasion? So we're having a party at my boyfriend's house, which was very, very close to where I lived. And clashes break out. And it was so violent that we had to have my birthday on the stairs. We couldn't even be in the house. And we just stayed on the stairs. I remember we sang Happy Birthday. And, you know, that was the last year in Lebanon. It was a very dangerous time. And so my mother went to Syracuse University, where my brother was, and she actually applied for me because I refused to sign an application.

24:50So she just applied for me. So you didn't want to move? I didn't want to move. No, I was very, very attached to Beirut at the time. I didn't want to move. But then everybody around me also was moving. So it was a year when there was an exodus of young people, especially. But then when I got to Syracuse, I discovered that, you know, there is one of the best communication schools in the country. And so I go there and I ask whether I could switch. And so then that's what I did. I could then follow my dream. Let's have some more music, Rula Khalaf. This is disc number four. What is it? It is Feeling Good by Nina Simone.

25:34and I associate this song with New York, which is where I went after university. And I loved New York. It was a wonderful time to be sort of in your early 20s, living in New York City. What more could you ask for? And so it was about feeling good.

26:06Blossom on the tree You know how I feel It's a new dawn It's a new day It's a new life For me And I'm feeling good Nina Simone and Feeling Good Rula Khalaf, in 1990 you joined the American business magazine Forbes initially as a fact checker. And then in 1991, you got your first scoop. It was an interview with the disgraced former stockbroker Jordan Belfort, the self-proclaimed Wolf of Wall Street. What do you remember about the interview? I only got the interview because I'd gathered enough information to expose what he was doing. And so then I convinced him to have an interview. And he thought that it was a real privilege for the Forbes magazine is contacting him.

27:02And so he was quite excited, very charming, very smooth. He kind of thought it was going to be a bit of a puff piece, did he? Absolutely. And what did you know about what he was doing that you wanted to expose? So I knew already, I talked to a lot of the people who had worked for him over the years. And I know that he was a petty stock pusher, that, you know, a lot of people had lost money. And so I remember he came to Forbes for the interview. and, you know, I was all charming and he felt really comfortable and we talked a lot. And then when he saw the piece, he was furious. Well, I'm not surprised.

27:40You described him as a twisted Robin Hood who takes from the rich and gives to himself in his merry band of brokers. He described you as an insolent reporter who deserved an A for cleverness. Yes, that was quite good. I remember my husband discovered the book. Like, you know, I forgot about him. And my husband discovered the book and discovered what he said. He was so excited. And of course, because Martin Scorsese's film draws on the book, that means that a version of you is in the film. What was seeing that like? It is, but it's not... I mean, they picked a foreign name and someone sort of slightly foreign looking, but never contacted me about it.

28:18And I didn't like the film. I thought the film was really, really exaggerated as well. So I didn't like the film. Rula, in 1995, you moved to London where you joined the Financial Times as the paper's North Africa correspondent. You were covering the Algerian Civil War back then and a complete rookie in terms of that job. How did you prepare for your first assignment? The FT cared about the war because Algeria was a major exporter of gas to Europe. and because Algeria was rescheduling its debt. So a lot of banks were interested in Algeria. And so, you know, companies like BP were also interested in Algeria.

29:00So our readers had a reason to understand what was going on in Algeria. And I remember I had to fight quite hard to go. And I think the editors were quite split on whether it was dangerous or not. And I remember that it was a tragic, tragic story. There were massacres everywhere. and, you know, everybody was killing. And I wonder how all of that landed with you emotionally. I mean, relatively recently, having been through parallel experiences yourself, I'm sure. While at uni, when I did my master's, I took some courses in the history of North Africa and I think I was just really interested in North Africa.