Rob Reynolds

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Rob Reynolds
Senior Washington Correspondent | United States
Biography

Rob Reynolds, Al Jazeera English's senior Washington correspondent, has more than 25 years experience in international television journalism. He has reported from over 30 countries, and from war zones including Iraq, Kuwait, Bosnia, Somalia, Ethiopia, Russia and Haiti.

He has extensively covered US politics and policymaking for Al Jazeera. As the 2008 American presidential campaign unfolded, Rob followed developments from the snowy fields of Iowa to the summer political party conventions to election night itself. Rob has received an Emmy Award and a Robert F Kennedy Memorial Journalism Award for his reporting.

Latest posts by Rob Reynolds

By Rob Reynolds in Americas on October 14th, 2011

An outdoor rock concert kicked off a big public relations push by the city of Juarez to clean up its crime-tarnished image. Called “Competitiva Juarez”, the city-sponsored two-week-long series of business, cultural and trade events is meant to promote a city notorious for sky-high rates of murder and drug fuelled crime.

Mexican President Felipe Calderone spoke at the opening conference. Former New York mayor Rudi Giuliani and former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev will also make speeches.

By Rob Reynolds in Americas on August 17th, 2011

Until very recently, the little town of Columbus, New Mexico, had just one modest clam to fame: on March 11, 1916, it was raided by Mexican revolutionary leader Francisco “Pancho” Villa.

Villa's men sacked the town, causing several deaths and considerable destruction. The band then hightailed it back across the border, ahead of a punitive expedition sent by US President Woodrow Wilson.

Wilson's 10,000 troops failed to nab Villa, and the border town slumbered away the century beneath the New Mexico sun.

By Rob Reynolds in Americas on July 31st, 2010
Photo by Getty Images

There are places, like the medical examiners office in Tucson, Arizona, where the human cost of migration to the United States is counted.

Dr Bruce Parks, the chief medical examiner, is a tall, thin, quiet man. He put on rubber gloves and led me over to a zippered plastic bag sitting on a steel gurney.

"These people, we don’t know who they are, and we may never know," he says, opening the container. 

Dr Parks gently withdraws a skull, grey and dry, weathered by the sun and gnawed by scavengers. What's in this bag was once a man. He was found in the desert outside Tucson, along the route that migrants take from Mexico. 

"I don't know his age," Dr Parks says, turning the skull slowly in his hands. "He had teeth once, but the teeth are not there anymore - evidently they have fallen out due to animal activity."

'Awful and lonely'

By Rob Reynolds in Americas on July 14th, 2010
Photo by Reuters

On any given day in Port au Prince you'll see lots of international aid workers whizzing around the city in big SUVs.

In the evenings, groups of foreign workers often gather in the city's bars and restaurants to relax after work.

Haitians know perfectly well that billions of dollars in aid have been promised to help their country recover from the catastrophic earthquake of January 12th.

So, watching the foreign workers go to and fro, they often wonder exactly what the money is being spent on.

We asked a few of the more than one and a half million Haitians living in tent camps what they thought. Within a minute or two we had struck up conversations with several people. Then a crowd gathered, and women began loudly wailing and throwing their hands in the air.

Emaneze Lima was one of them. "We don't know what they are spending the money on because they don't visit us to ask us what we need," she said angrily.

By Rob Reynolds in Americas on July 11th, 2010

Leogane camp

If you ask, where did all the money for Haiti go, one answer is: not here.

When the earthquake rumbled up from the earth directly below Leogane, 20,000-30,000 people were killed, and 80 to 90 per cent of the town's concrete buildings were reduced to rubble.

And, chunk by chunk, shovelful by shovelful, that's some of the rubble that Saint-Fort Mackenson and the other members of his work crew are clearing away. 

Mackenson, a thin young man with a mop of plaited hair, pauses to lean on his shovel and wipe the sweat from his face.

“It's very hard work to to clear this debris,” he says in Kriyol, the French-related language of Haiti, “because we are using only our hands. We don't have any machinery. “

By Rob Reynolds in Americas on May 15th, 2010
Cherokee members at a museum in Washington. Photo: Getty Images

At a primary school in Tahlequah, Oklahoma, the Cherokee Native American nation is fighting hard to keep its ancestral language alive for a new generation.

It is a total immersion programme, with all lessons taught in Cherokee.

Children read and write the language, using a syllabary developed by a self-taught genius named Sequoyah, who brought literacy to the Cherokee in the 19th century.

And a 21st century tool is helping the language of Sequoyah survive: the Askongodeesk—or as we say in English, the laptop computer.

Teaching tools

Each kid in the 4th grade classroom I visited was assigned a laptop equipped with a Cherokee keyboard. Like children everywhere, they were busy instantly-messaging each other—in Cherokee.

By Rob Reynolds in Americas on May 13th, 2010

"A long time ago, man never known on earth was all alone... then he made the first man, Having Power to Carry Light... then he made the first woman, Bright Shining woman." - Wichita Creation Story, as told by Doris McLemore

In a meadow in rural Oklahoma, I sat and listened to a language that soon will be gone forever.

 

By Rob Reynolds in Americas on May 3rd, 2010
Photo by AFP

A giant oil rig under construction looms over the small town of Moss Point, Mississippi, looking something like the Death Star from a Star Wars movie.

Like many other communities in the Gulf region, Moss Point is economically bound to the oil and gas industry. I spoke with Theresa Goryer, an elderly woman who works at a gas station in Moss Point. Her two sons have worked on offshore rigs.

"They make good money," Goryer said. "They give up a lot in their family life for it. It’s not an easy job out there on those rigs."

For most people here, the energy industry means one thing: jobs.

By Rob Reynolds in Americas on February 12th, 2010
Photo by Reuters
One month after his world was shattered, Pierre Jean-Claude stands atop the ruins of what once was his home.

About 100 people lived in the building, not far from the centre of Port-au-Prince. Many of them still lie dead beneath the debris.
 
Among them are Jean-Claude's two boys, 16 and eight.
 
"I can't get anything out of the rubble," says Jean-Claude, a thin man who looks much older than his 48 years.
 
"I'd have to sift through four floors of concrete. I have nothing left. It's impossible."
 
The number killed by the earthquake is now estimated at between 212,000 to 230,000. No one really knows for certain how many people died. Many are buried in unmarked mass graves.
 
An estimated 300,000 were injured, the United Nations says.
 
By Rob Reynolds in Americas on February 10th, 2010
Photo by EPA

Demonstrators from a women's group rallied outside Haiti's ruined National Palace on Tuesday.

They said they are angry with their government, and with the United Nations, which they believe isn't doing enough to provide shelter.

"We don't have any tents! We haven't gotten help from anyone," one of the demonstrators told me.

Over and over, Haitians tell foreign visitors they have lost all faith in their government. Many say they are pinning their hopes on their superpower neighbour to the north.

"If the Americans stay, my life will change. Everyone's life will be changed. We want the Americans to take over the country, today," a man selling fruit outside the palace grounds told me.

"We want American people to be in charge, not the Haitians. If Haitians officials are in charge of the aid, they will only help their own families and friends."

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Biography

Rob Reynolds's picture
Rob Reynolds
Senior Washington Correspondent
Rob Reynolds is Al Jazeera's award-winning senior Washington correspondent.

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