The new face of Scottish TV news
Halla Mohieddeen to anchor news on STV2
REPORTER Halla Mohieddeen was in China for the Sichuan earthquake, Asia for the tsunami and France for a wave of terror attacks – and now she is back in Scotland just in time for the general election.
For more than a decade, the 37-year-old has been one step ahead of the news, working in countries that have suddenly become the focus of the world’s attention due to national disasters or terrorist atrocities.
Halla, who grew up in Blainslie, Roxburghshire, has come home to anchor a nightly news programme on new channel STV2 just as Scotland comes under the global political spotlight once more.
The journalist, who makes her debut on STV News Tonight this
evening, puts her career success down to an uncanny ability to be around at the most newsworthy times.
Halla said: “I always seem to be in the right place at the right time.
“I don’t think the news is following me but I can’t be sure. Maybe me being here prompted the call for a general election.
“I was working in Asia when the tsunami struck in 2004 and was in China when the massive Sichuan earthquake hit in 2008.
“I was in France for the Charlie Hebdo massacre in January 2015, the Paris attacks that November and the Nice attack last year. It’s been a bit of a career whirlwind.”
Halla, who has a Scottish mother and a Lebanese father, admits she has chosen the perfect moment to return home.
She said: “Scotland is the place to be. The UK is in a state of constant change and Scotland is right at the heart of everything – it’s the driving force.
“From the snap general election announced last week and Brexit about to tear Britain out of the EU to the prospect of a second independence referendum, it’s all go.
“Journalists like to go where the news is and the news is here.
“I’m not going to be bored, that’s for sure. Conversations are taking place the length and breadth of the country.”
Halla, a graduate of Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh, has covered the biggest international stories of the last decade for Paris-based, 24-hour English language news channel, France24, as their Morning News and Middle East Matters presenter.
She has also worked for a number of China’s TV and radio stations, including CCTV, Xinhua News Network Corporation and Beijing Radio 774. Halla, who is married to Italian engineer Tomasso Pani, was working for France24 when a colleague was killed in the Paris attacks in November 2015.
She and her colleagues
More than ever before Scots want to know about international stories that affect them