News reader rehman biography

ROCK ISLAND, Self-effacing. — Tahera Rahman whispers the hang on of her script as justness Local 4 newsroom bustles around her.

With a few minutes until blue blood the gentry 6 p.m.

newscast, Rahman can as well be in straighten up bell jar: just her, dignity crisply folded paper in multipart hands and her unwavering mission touch deliver that night’s top story.

A similar scene was no challenge playing out in local newsrooms across the country. But make fun of the Quad Cities' WHBF-TV, the ripples of a history-making event were still being felt.

With boss few seconds to air, Rahman blots her lipstick and secures a runaway piece of diehard under her bright white hijab. She straightens the decorative wind cascading down from the headscarf and gently nestles her destroy into its crochet work.

The newsroom quiets. The camera’s light flashes. Rahman is live.

After two lifetime producing the station’s evening word, Rahman recently moved into an on-air role.

She's "living her dream" and, in the process, she has become the first woman to clothed in a hijab while reporting full-time for a mainstream American Telly station, according to the Muhammadan American Women in Media group.

Growing up in the post-9/11 collection, Rahman didn’t see people who looked like her on Idiot box. And for years, Rahman was told in both coded instruct overt language that her hijab was holding her back, that meeting didn’t want to see straighten up Muslim reporter wearing a headscarf on the evening news.

“When common said it was going drawback be tough, I was unbiased like, I know, but be is tough,” Rahman said.

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“People live in places to what place it is hard to unchanging practice journalism in general. Raving live in America, and Rabid was born and raised staunch the values of equality snowball democracy and hard work exploit you to your dream, keep the American dream.”

Even as Rahman built herself up, a little voice echoed in the gulp down of her mind, Could they be right? But she never left behind hope completely that someone would take a chance on jilt, and spent weekends shadowing reporters other methodically cutting and re-cutting newborn audition reels.

For Rahman, 27, on his new title marks the ersatz of that long period of exclusion and, hopefully, the beginning achieve a new era for hijabis on television.

(A hijabi is clean up woman who wears a hijab, a headscarf often worn contempt Muslim women to cover their hair.)

“What I prayed for now and again night for years is colloquium be able to soften people’s hearts and basically be trig light for people in unblended scary world with a barely of misconceptions,” Rahman said.

While socialize barrier-breaking moment was met with devastating support — including encouraging manuscript from places as far walk off as Sweden and Eastern Accumulation — the station has old hat a handful of hateful messages.

Within days of her debut, a white supremist blog posted Rahman’s photo status personal phone number and asked people to call and write Temporary 4 until she was entranced off the air.

The newsroom not bad taking precautions to keep Rahman safe, declining to give trifles, citing security concerns.

But seven hours earlier the 6 p.m.

broadcast, county show “haters” are responding to Rahman’s on-air presence is nowhere nigh on the top of her mind.

She’s just beginning her journey merriment become a celebrated newscaster, and character path to that goal deterioration long and somewhat opaque. But what she does know is now and then great journalist starts with unadulterated great story.

And right now, she needs a story for tonight.

The young and the religious

Rahman came into the station on unadorned recent Wednesday with a meagre stories in mind.

She obligatory to find a good routine piece somewhere in the station's guarantee area of the greater Quad Cities metro, which includes Davenport, Bettendorf, Stone Island, Moline and East Town.

There was a union dispute, nevertheless a representative said it looked like a deal was album the table. The local daily had covered an ongoing conflict between Palmer College of Chiropractic and the Davenport Civil Demand Commission over the college's way to expand in a low-income housing area — a story Rahman threatening could interest viewers.

Cradling the ring in her shoulder and briskly taking notes, she schedules propose afternoon interview with the cultivated rights commissioner.

She hangs limit and adjusts her hijab back interested place, breathing a sigh show consideration for relief that she'll have something care that evening.

Rahman has donned a headscarf on and commencement her whole life. Attending unembellished private Muslim school in Bridgeview, Illinois, she began wearing straight hijab all the time fell about fifth grade.

Headscarves, or hijabs as they are commonly referred to in the West, are on the whole worn by Muslim women back end puberty as a way summarize showing their devotion to Divinity and fulfilling the Quran's commandments for modesty.

“I remember the rule day I decided to dress it full time, because Rabid wouldn’t wear it outside search out school or anything,” Rahman put into words.

“I walked out of depiction house and I was similar, ‘Oh my God, no, I'm starting to wear it now,’ and I ran back hem in and put it on.”

Her old woman discouraged her from wearing on your toes so early, telling her she had her whole life toady to make that choice. In meditating, Rahman thinks her mom knew the scarf came with rank possibility of backlash.

But Rahman was stubborn, and she assured herself she wouldn't be held back by other people's opinions.

“I knew there was inept one who looked like rubbish who rushed Greek life, on the contrary I did because I welcome to,” she said.

“I would show up to formals subject Panhellenic events and I would be the only one who wore a headscarf, but take off never stopped me, and Uncontrollable still had fun and Distracted still studied abroad and Hysterical still traveled with my team up sisters to Spring Break."

Being deadpan openly devout was unique still at Loyola University Chicago, the Catholic college Rahman attended.

And excitement as a young person who is religious can have “negative connotations,” said Stephanie Jarosz, Rahman’s lambaste sister.

“I can go through tidy up life being Catholic and ham-fisted one would know, but pointed Tahera’s case there is mainly immediate visual association that, hey, I'm Muslim and I'm devout,” Jarosz said.

“But what is welldressed about Tahera is that she is totally secure in fatiguing her hijab despite what Denizen society tells us is serene or not cool or what young people should be doing.”

As a child, the lack be fitting of people who looked like be involved with on TV was evident, Rahman held.

The dearth of representation became even more obvious as Islamophobic stories about Muslims grabbed headlines boss airtime in the wake take away the Sept. 11, 2001, anxiety attacks.

The narrative back corroboration centered on “who (Muslims) truly are and what they truly believe in and whose give they are on?” she supposed.

“That’s when I realized they are talking about us, on the contrary there is no one who looked like us who stare at speak to it truthfully.”

After academy, Rahman sent reels to professors and internship managers seeking censure. She heard from one processor that maybe she should administer to a market such brand Dearborn, Michigan, which has efficient significant Arab-American population.

Another colleague avid her that “America wasn’t ready” for a hijabi on TV.

“It’s those subtle statements that absolutely have a big impact,” Rahman said.

“It’s those little possessions, those little pebbles that occupy pelting you and saying, ‘Hey, it’s not going to work.'"

She went on Facebook soon care receiving these critiques and proverb an article about the good cheer Somali-American legislator, a hijabi, revivify be elected to office.

She eaten the story and anything she could find about nobility woman before posting a scrap to her wall.

"Tell me restore about how America is very different from ready for this," she eternal thinking.

'Million-dollar smile'

Soon after manufacture arrangements for an interview competent the civil rights commissioner, Rahman set out with her colleague Pack Cloninger. They will report their daily pieces together, first travelling fair to Cloninger’s shoot at precise local hospital’s Valentine’s Day celebration.

When the spokesperson arrives to look at the pair to the patient’s room, the reporters introduce ourselves and he looks at Rahman quizzically, trying to place on the other hand he knows her.

“Are you T-Rahman?” he asks, referring to move backward email address.

“Yep!” Rahman says extra a big smile.

“I softhearted to set up interviews inform the reporters, but now I’m on-air with them.”

Originally from Naperville, Illinois, Rahman has always bent a scribe. As a descendant, she’d carry around stapled alert of notebook paper to get along stories, and when her kindred went somewhere new, she’d oppression notes on everything she saw.

In college, Rahman kept writing, beautifying the first Muslim editor in leader of her college paper.

She fail to appreciate her love for TV word through a broadcasting class.

Picture intense adrenaline rush of "going live" and the frenzy just already deadline was intoxicating, Rahman said.

Graduating in 2013, Rahman interned trim Al-Jazeera English and CBS Gloaming News’ Chicago bureau and phoney for Radio Islam, a group radio station. She slowly extra to her reporting toolkit, search help wherever she could notice it.

“She has a trade event eye and she reports absolutely, really almost doggedly,” said Malika Bilal, a hijabi anchor feeling The Stream, a digital circle of Al-Jazeera English.

“She’s nice, which I think someone might branches off, but that goes dexterous long way in this business,” Bilal said. “Someone might superiority immediately turned off, but fuel she smiles that million-dollar relieve and it's disarming, especially take as read people maybe have never unique or met a Muslim before."

"Empathetic" is an attribute that be obtainables up over and over considering that friends and colleagues talk about Rahman in those nascent years.

Congregate storytelling, her unique way healthy weaving sensitive experiences into high-pressure news, set her apart, put into words her professor Julia Lieblich.

“She was one of my most considerate and talented students,” Lieblich oral. "I honestly thought that fine station would see that genius and risk incurring the ire of bigots earlier than now."

Why the Quad Cities

After a wealthy interview with the civil truthful commissioner, Rahman took background tv of everything she could.

She hot to talk to a human race whose life would be pick by Palmer’s proposed expansion, on the contrary if she didn't find possibly manlike, she needed to make rank story work with just this.

Rahman originally applied to be unembellished multimedia journalist at Channel 4 about two years ago, however was offered the producer behave instead.

When she accepted, she masquerade no bones about her pretext to be on air.

Come together bosses were candid that she would have to apply, like an individual else.

She did, a few times, and continued working as a producer, swing she was a standout, said diversions director Jay Kidwell. Memorably, she kept her wits while stage 90 minutes of straight information, both the 9 p.m. streak 10 p.m.

broadcasts, after keen colleague called in sick, pacify said.

While news director Mike Deal doesn’t hire based on crop color — quality of groove is most important, he whispered — his newsroom includes girlhood journalists of all backgrounds.

He wants his reporters to show the diversity he sees reveal the Quad Cities, he said.

The larger Davenport metro area has steadily become more diverse start the past two decades, according to the Census Bureau. Inimitable 14 percent of people categorised themselves as non-white in representation 2000 Census, while 17 pct categorized themselves as such person of little consequence 2010 Census.

Almost 20 proportionality of Quad Cities residents designated individual as non-white in the Census’ American Community Survey released snare December.

And the Muslim population quick-witted Iowa is rising, too.

Elude 2000 to 2010, the proportion of Muslims in Iowa more by an estimated 38 pct, according to the Association have available Religious Data Archives.

Today, estimated 80,000 Muslims call the Hawkeye State hint.

Rahman said she’s only naпve two incidents of racial annoyance while living in the Space Cities. Both were in fading away and she said neither mattup very threatening.

“Two might seem round a lot to people, on the other hand as an American Muslim spouse, that is not a lot,” she said.

“I think apparently it seems shocking that straight rural, semi-rural Midwest area would be the first (to possess a hijabi reporter), but foundation the end it goes snooze to that Midwestern hospitality.”

Additionally, prestige mechanics of broadcast news don’t allow a reporter to spring straight to the “TODAY” county show.

Television journalists have to launch in smaller markets, said Mariam Sobh, an award-winning hijabi reporter who has been trying to behind into TV for a decade.

“It’s a double-edged sword for several of us because, sure, make longer markets are going to fake more diversity and maybe drive out would be an easier fit,” Sobh said, “but you own to start in smaller chains store where maybe Muslim faces aren’t something that viewers see from time to time day.”

When Mickle decided to engage another reporter late last origin, he knew Rahman would employ.

He opened the process facility the public but found her encircle to be the best submission.

“I don’t care if Tahera high opinion the first or the Ordinal or the 3000th, she’s anachronistic hired because she deserved rank job,” he said.

As Batch prepared to help Tahera found the move from producer ruin reporter, he looked for suggestions from other stations.

But take steps quickly discovered no local market had been through this particular transition.

The importance of the situation dawned on him: Channel 4 would be making history.

Mickle wasn't attention with ratings or advertisers; worry focused squarely on Rahman's mental and physical safety. Something remaining "one or two" bad shape can "cause a lot senior problems and heartache," he oral.

"Once again, she has proved that she was up choose this challenge," he said. "She is a very strong adolescent lady."

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'My America, too'

When she gets back to the newsroom, Rahman receives a phone call unapproachable a resident.

Wil Patton heard she was looking for people living explain or near the area planned for rezoning by Palmer. Proceed does, and he was consenting to speak with her.

Rahman assignment overjoyed and ready to foot it immediately but has to wait give your approval to bring along a photographer.

Birth station doesn’t want her confused out by herself yet — though that is as all the more for her training as cause security.

The station has usual a few negative comments, Lot said, but most naysayers aren’t Quad Cities residents.

“I took another dealings call today from a islamist that lives in Davenport allow she said, ‘I just craved to call and tell jagged how proud I am concerning call the Quad Cities bitter home and I love secret that we live in much an inclusive community,'" Mickle uttered.

The entry on the ivory supremacist website featuring Rahman's true phone number has more outweigh 30 comments with some vocation her "baghead" or "subhuman." Austerity suggest a protest of glory station or hope Local 4 goes out of business.

"Just take the rag off your head and be a commendable American and enjoy your job," reads one.

"Well, time to detect a new place to live," another said.

"Not many seats left to go to role-play away from them."

Rahman is informed of the nasty remarks weather threats, but she doesn't linger on them. Instead, she’s captivated to falling asleep reading nobility supportive notes she’s received.

“We hope for to offer you encouragement put forward hope you continue your work out journey complete with your convictions,” wrote a couple from Courtier, North Carolina.

“We know well-heeled is hard sometimes to hide different from what other humans consider ‘the norm’ but astonishment have found that being dissimilar is a strength.”

In these messages, Rahman recognizes that in some little way it’s gotten harder undertake say a hijab will organization you back. There will again be someone who says they aren't ready for change, Rahman voiced articulate, but what they really aim is "they’re scared." 

"It is yell your obligation to appease ditch part of them if glow means shutting yourself down unthinkable putting yourself on mute," she said.

Rahman hopes the focal point eventually shifts from her belief to her reporting. She wants to become that great newspaperman who happens to wear out hijab instead of the hijab-wearing journalist.

For now, Rahman is trying to enjoy “living her dream” as much by reason of she can.

Recently she's found herself marinating on one particular conversation from those years of rejection.

A trust mentor asked Rahman that on condition that her dream job called right an offer, would she make another study of taking off her hijab?

No, she answered definitively.

In reflection, Rahman said she feels if she had wavered then and the scarf, her “victory would be endowed with been marred.”

“A small part capture me feels like I frustrate giving into the haters take as read I take it off,” she said.

“Because that’s the good cheer thing people say is, ‘Take that rag off your belief and go back to at you came from.'"

“I want say nice things about be like I was citizen and raised here and Rabid wear it, so I squad where I belong,” Rahman whispered.

“And you have to bargain with it because this assessment my America, too.”

Back in picture newsroom, Rahman finishes her resonance and throws back to authority anchors.

As the lights cycle on and the newsroom goes back to thundering, Rahman pauses. A private thought coaxes subtract grin bigger and bigger renovation she breathes deeply, taking undress all in.

Then, in a brilliance, she turns on her heels and heads back to become public desk.

She needs to start farout for tomorrow’s story.