Rageh Omaar a new somali celebrity

[LayZie G.]

AyYo Winger, WHY MUST YOU BE SO NEGATIVE ALL THE TIME???

 

KEEP YOUR OPINIONS TO YOURSELF, THIS THREAD WAS NOT POSTED SO YOU CAN CRITIZE RAAGE AND COMPANY.

 

..and who are you to say that IMAN & Ayaan Hersi are shame to somali and Islam, are you THE SOMALI/MUSLIM ASSOCIATION spokesman???

 

YOu can envy these pple all you want, but atleast they are out there making money the best way they know how, can you say the same about yourself???

 

MONEY DOESN'T HAVE FACE, RELIGION OR RACE, SHOOT, IMAN NEEDS TO HOOK A HOMEGRL UP, THROW A MIL OR SOMETHING MY WAY...

 

 

ps:IMAN CAN BUY YOU and HARGEISA wingy.

[Nazra]

The man is not only educated,impeccable he's also exquisitely handsome.

He is so elegant yet sophisticated.

[XawoTako]

yes indeed, a very talented somali. people like him really inspire me. i'm really happy and impressed with his success. someone mention that he married a 'white gal'. i think we should stay clear of people's private and personal lifes. we should pat him on the shoulder for all he has achieved.

[Blessed]

Originally posted by Gediid:

His sister Raaqiya by the way does not work for the BBC but is the Executive director of Human Rights Watch, an organization similar to Amnesty International.

lol thats exactly what my sis told. :confused:

 

Ameenah, walaaleey ka ja jabiska naga dhaaf...Naad cadaan uu qabaa aa? Now that is a shame...But hey, what can I say...I just hope she's Muslim...

KK.. I don't know what she is but he seems like an intelligent bloke. Anyways, I don't think that he is all that looks wise, all the women at work are drooling over him and they feel they have to tell me cos I'm Somali ... it is disgusting!

[Paragon]

I must admit, the fella as you've all said is talented. However i felt bad for him when he was chased from the borders of zimbabwe by Mugabe. And also when him and another british journalist were accused of being pro-Iraq by Tony blair in 1998. Otherwise i think he is one of the best journalist.

 

PS: it was good when he use to present "focus on Africa" with Chris Pickerton during the 90ties.....

[BuRcOs_1st_LaDy]

Yea that guy Rageh is doing his thang...i'm proud of him.....

But IMAN , AYAAN, and the model Warsan-Waris....whatever her name is I dont think there representing our country right.

Iman - every picture i see of her why she naked? Akaas!...she need some xishood in her life, she married a white man, and she has no sense of self-identity. In other words she doesnt represent where she is from....Somalia! She too gaalo gaalo for me.

And Ayaan is just lost....i've never seen a Somali athiest aint that crazy.

Warsan-she spoke very poorly about Somalia when she was intereviewed by Barbara Walters on female circumcision. She made somaliz seem like some barbaric creatures with no civilization in the far off land. I think she did us wrong. But thats all I have to say about our somaliz in the "lime light"......but I'm coming up too so loook out for a sista.....ama be big stuff.....

[Che -Guevara]

in streets MNLPS, London , Toronto , Columbus and Melbourne can look up to as role model.....I guess he is one of many celebs to come out of this war.....They are actually Rageh Omaar T-shirst over da net.....And there is also a website dedicated to Iraqi Info Minister, Mohammed Al-Sahhaf selling T-shirts......Lol

crazy world..........lol

[QUANTUM LEAP]

Kudos to all the talented pple out there. Im sure there many more out there who not heard of and arent int he eye of the public or media. However I would like to make a slight comment here. Most of the above mentioned people are either married to foreigners or somehow closely associated with them.

 

Is their success attributed to the fact they are supported by their spouses who happen to be foreign say something about our own!

[Kool_Kat]

Ameenah,

 

you know I neva said anything about his looks...I, personally, think he can use a hair cut, and a faicial...He some how looks dirty, I don't know if it is his skin tone, or the cameras...But the brotha can use some touch up...

 

What I was refering to is him being married to a white chick...Which is kinda disappointing...But oh well...N'way, more BIG UPS to him...

[Gabbal]

I didn't even know that the BBC english service had Somali until a couple of days ago when C-Span (the Somalis in America might know this) started airing the BBC World Service and I saw the fella you guys are talking about. At first I didn't think he was Somali even though he looked like one of us until his name came up on the screen and he pronounced the "ca" part of an Iraq by the name of General Saadi (Sacdi).

 

Very fluent in english, puts shame on the English as first language speakers!

[RaMpAgE]

Sallam....

 

congrats too R.omar . hes a good role model too all somalis.

 

Most of the above mentioned people are either married to foreigners or somehow closely associated with them.

 

Is their success attributed to the fact they are supported by their spouses who happen to be foreign say something about our own!

sxb..i was also thinking of that aswell. :confused:

[Paragon]

Profile: Rageh Omaar

 

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Our man on the roof

 

Amid bombs and bullets, crippled tanks and toppling statues, the BBC's man in Baghdad has remained cool and calm, lucidly recounting the defeat of Saddam. Little wonder his fan club is growing, here and in the US

 

Vanessa Thorpe

Sunday April 13, 2003

The Observer

 

Confronted by daily news broadcasts that detail the bleakest of human activities - for example, groups of people killing each other - the British public can be relied upon to focus on some bright star in the darkness. In this war that bright star is Rageh Omaar.

The Somalian-born television reporter has been propelled into a high-profile national position with amazing rapidity by the conflict in Iraq. Standing alone on his Baghdad rooftop, awaiting the allied onslaught each evening in early March, he quickly became a household fixture; a still point in the turning world, resplendent in his bright red fleece.

 

As the face of the BBC on the terrestrial channels and on BBC News 24, Omaar's mere location at the eye of an accelerating storm had a drama he did not have to do much to communicate. But recently he has found himself in the thick of it, reporting on the death of colleagues in the hotel he shares with fellow journalists and commentating live on the drawn-out toppling of that recalcitrant statue with an energy and intensity that matched the historic moment.

 

An astonishing 4.3 million viewers tuned into to Omaar as they waited for Saddam's bronze likeness to be pulled over at 3.45pm on BBC1 - that's 48 per cent of the audience share. Since the start of the war on 20 March nearly 90 per cent of the population have watched him on either the weekday BBC news bulletins or on News 24. The reports have been syndicated across the US too.

 

This weekend, not surprisingly then, there are persistent rumours that American news networks are determined to poach him, as they have other British news presenters such as Daljit Dhaliwal, Brent Sadler and Lara Logan. CNN, it is said, has already made an offer, but the BBC are holding hard. 'We are delighted that other people think Rageh is doing as well as we do,' a spokeswoman said this weekend.

 

And there has been fan mail. One elderly headmistress of a girls' school has confessed herself entranced by 'that nice boy', while Ann Treneman was merely the first national journalist to suggest in print that Omaar is the only war reporter who is getting better looking as the conflict progresses. Last month the New York Post dubbed him the 'Scud Stud' of this war (the name was coined during the 1991 Gulf conflict for NBC's Arthur Kent who also wrote regularly for The Observer ). Last week T-shirts bearing Omaar's noble features were printed and sold on the internet as mementos of the war, along, it must be admitted, with rival tops emblazoned with the less inspiring countenance of Mohammed Saeed al-Sahaf, better known as the former Iraqi Information Minister, or Comical Ali.

 

But if Omar has reached the status of cultural icon partly through talent, he has also got there by accident. When news editors planned coverage of the coming conflict they were wary of embedding their big-name journalists with the armed forces. It was feared their output might be controlled by the military. As a result the BBC's big names - John Simpson and Fergal Keane, for example - were held back and placed around the edges.

 

When the fighting started, and particularly after the death of Terry Lloyd, it became clear much of the terrain 'in country' was too dangerous for free-wheeling journalists and news coverage began to rely on those who were 'embedded' outside the big cities and on those, like Omaar, in Baghdad.

 

'Other than in Baghdad and in northern Iraq,' said Richard Sambrook, head of BBC news, 'it's extremely difficult for us to work independently, on safety grounds - as the death of an ITN team showed - so we are inhibited from independent journalism in a way that we weren't during the first [1991] Gulf war.'

 

Of course, Omaar is not the only British journalist in the capital. His radio colleague Andrew Gilligan, the Today programme's defence and diplomatic correspondent, has also been heavily employed, most notably when he was fired at live on-air a few days ago. Others have also been prominent, for instance, David Chater of Sky News and Lindsey Hilsum of Channel 4 News , who made a memorable visit to a hospital visit outside Baghdad early on. Print journalists have also made their mark in and around Baghdad, notably the war veteran Robert Fisk of the Independent, Suzanne Goldenberg of the Guardian and Anton Antonowicz of the Mirror .

 

Yet it is Omaar and, increasingly, his colleague Gilligan who have been at the centre of another virtual battle, the infamous tug of war for hearts and minds. As representatives of British state-funded media they have been criticised for being mouthpieces of both the Baghdad Broadcasting Corporation and the Bush Broadcasting Corporation. Writing in the Sunday Telegraph, Omaar said he chuckled when he heard pundits deploring an 'Iraqi bias' in Baghdad bulletins. 'If only they could spend a day with us in the press centre at Iraq's Ministry of Information in Baghdad, which was heavily bombed last night,' he wrote. 'Yes, there are daily briefings by Iraqi Ministers and carefully organised trips for journalists in the presence of Ministry officials. But by putting such severe restrictions on where we are allowed to set up our broadcasting equipment, the regime ensures that many reports that they so diligently help us to gather are simply never sent out.'

 

Sensitivities reached their height with regard to Omaar when Centcom in Qatar claimed troops who fired on the Palestine Hotel and killed two television journalists were responding to enemy fire. Omaar was among those who testified that no sniper fire had been heard.

 

Support for his performance from editors in London has been swift and total. Jonathan Baker, the BBC's Worldwide editor, told The Observer this weekend that one of Omaar's strengths was his depth of knowledge. 'Rageh has been reporting from the country on and off for more than six years and has spent several months there in the last year alone,' said Baker. 'As a result he speaks with a knowledge and authority which other writers less well-versed in Iraqi affairs and history cannot match.'

 

Baker also praised his skills as a communicator. 'He has the classic virtues of the BBC foreign correspondent,' he added. 'Commitment to the story over a period, even-handedness in his reporting, and an ability to impart extra value to his coverage with explanations and analysis when required.'

 

Omaar, who lives in Johannesburg when he isn't posted elsewhere, gains some of his insight from three months spent studying Arabic in Jordan in 1996. He was born in Mogadishu on 19 July 1967 and is the youngest of four children. Moving to Britain as a child, he went to Cheltenham Boys College and on to Oxford where he studied Modern History.

 

He started out in journalism as a trainee at the Voice newspaper in Brixton and then worked for a short spell on the now-defunct London magazine City Limits, before moving to Ethiopia in 1991 where he freelanced for the BBC World Service.

 

He returned to London the following year as a producer for Focus on Africa based in Bush House, home of the World Service, and then became producer/reporter on Newshour. After a period as the BBC's Amman correspondent in 1997, he covered the drought in Ethiopia and the floods in Mozambique as Developing World correspondent.

 

Omaar's current title is Africa Correspondent, which is why he lives in South Africa with his wife Nina, a former occupational therapist and the daughter of Sir John and Lady Montgomery Cuninghame.

 

The couple met at a wedding in India and now have two children, Loula, aged two, and a baby son called Sami.

 

BBC sources suggest that he may well be seeing them all for the first time in more than six months this weekend. He is believed to be taking some well-deserved rest and recuperation, although he may find he is now more widely recognised in the streets of Jo'burg than he could ever have predicted.

 

Colleagues have nothing but generous things to say about this journalist who remained cool and patient as the armed forces closed in, and then got appropriately excited when the people of Baghdad threw their shoes at the fallen dictator's bronze effigy. Aside from being a reporter with integrity, Omaar, like the BBC's Clive Myrie, is proving an inspirational figure for young black reporters.

 

'The Rageh you see on screen and hear on the radio is an exact match to the person you meet off-air,' says his boss Baker. 'Unassuming, unaffected, committed to his job and a thoroughly nice man.'

 

RAGEH OMAAR

 

 

DoB: 19 July 1967 (Mogadishu, Somalia)

 

Family: Lives in Johannesburg with his wife Nina. They have one daughter and one son

 

Education: Cheltenham Boys College and Oxford

 

First job: With the Voice newspaper in Brixton

 

Heroes: George Alagiah, Charles Wheeler, Robert Fisk, Trevor McDonald

 

vanessa.thorpe@obsever.co.uk

[Blessed]

Originally posted by Kool_Kat:

Ameenah,

 

you know I neva said anything about his looks...I, personally, think he can use a hair cut, and a faicial...He some how looks dirty, I don't know if it is his skin tone, or the cameras...But the brotha can use some touch up...

looooooooooooool. I felt it impolite to point those things out but my sentiments exactly.

[shyhem]

Somalis are either good at what they doing or bad at what they are doing.So far this somali has beaten the odd and he is indeed good at what he's doing even though i have reservation about white women sitting next to every successful black man.

[Gediid]

Shaqsi

A succesful black lawyer I know once said "the road to success for a black man is through the legs of a white woman" and he had a long list to substantiate that.

But I just think its all COINCIDENCE Succesful blacks white spouses.