France TV journalist Lea Salame. AFP
France TV journalist Lea Salame. AFP
France TV journalist Lea Salame. AFP
France TV journalist Lea Salame. AFP

Lea Salame: the Lebanese-born journalist behind France’s TV election debate


Soraya Ebrahimi
  • English
  • Arabic

Lea Salame is a Lebanese-born French journalist who was born on October 27, 1979.

She escaped war in Lebanon with her Lebanese father and Armenian mother and settled in Paris at the age of 5. She obtained French nationality six years later.

Her father, Ghassan Salame, is a former Lebanese minister of culture and former special adviser to UN secretary general Kofi Annan.

Salame followed her father's and graduated from Pantheon-Assas University, then Sciences Po Paris in 2002.

She undertook her first internship on the Parliamentary Channel.

French journalists and TV hosts Lea Salame and Gilles Bouleau before moderating the live televised between Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen on April 20. EPA
French journalists and TV hosts Lea Salame and Gilles Bouleau before moderating the live televised between Emmanuel Macron and Marine Le Pen on April 20. EPA

She joined France 24 in 2007 to present La Soiree and having spent a year studying in New York, she also worked on the channel’s A Week in the Americas.

Salame undertook a trial run on France 3 to present Le Soir 3 then went to work on I Teli to present Elysee 2012.

In September 2014, she replaced Natacha Polony in On n'est pas Couche, broadcast on Saturday evenings on France 2.

Paris mayor and Socialist presidential candidate Anne Hidalgo, right, is interviewed by Lea Salame and French TV host and journalist Laurent Guimier on April 5. AFP
Paris mayor and Socialist presidential candidate Anne Hidalgo, right, is interviewed by Lea Salame and French TV host and journalist Laurent Guimier on April 5. AFP

Since August 2014, Salame has hosted the main interview on France Inter’s morning show. She also conducts high-profile interviews in the French edition of GQ.

In her private life, Salame has one child with Raphael Glucksmann, a politician in the European Parliament.

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Updated: April 21, 2022, 12:27 AM`