Al Jazeera America signs Soledad O’Brien as special correspondent

Al Jazeera America announced that it has signed the Emmy Award-winning journalist Soledad O’Brien  to contribute short-form segments as Special Correspondent to the broadcaster’s primetime current affairs magazine program “America Tonight.

“O’Brien’s career producing and reporting on the human side of many of the most important stories of the past decade will fit in perfectly with what Al Jazeera America will be covering every day,” said Ehab Al Shihabi, executive director of Al Jazeera’s international operations and the senior executive developing the new channel. “Her dedication to that type of journalism is what makes it so exciting to announce that she and her production company are joining the Al Jazeera America team.”

“I look forward to beginning a relationship with Al Jazeera America, which has made a commitment to producing quality programming and pursuing underreported stories,” O’Brien said.

O’Brien most recently served as an anchor and special correspondent for CNN, where she was the co-anchor of its CNN’s flagship morning program, “American Morning,” and the anchor of “Starting Point with Soledad O’Brien.”

In 2011, O’Brien won her first Emmy Award for “Crisis in Haiti” (on CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360) in the category of Outstanding Live Coverage of a Current News Story – Long Form. She was also a member of the teams that earned CNN a George Foster Peabody award for coverage of the British Petroleum oil spill and of Katrina, and an Alfred I. du Pont Award for its reporting on the Southeast Asia tsunami.