The public appearance of US journalist Abigail Velez on ABC7 drew significant attention ahead of the United States-Bosnia and Herzegovina World Cup match.
Velez’s behaviour was highly unprofessional as she announced the match and said she couldn’t point to Bosnia and Herzegovina on the map.
“I don’t know the first thing about Bosnia, and I don’t want to know. Team USA is back, and we are better than ever. Get prepared, Bosnia, because you don’t want it,” said Velez euphorically.
Soon after, she publicly apologized to all Bosnians and Herzegovinians; interestingly, her boss at ABC7 is a Bosnian.
As of August 2024, the President of ABC News is Almin Karamehmedović from Sarajevo. He oversees the daily operations of ABC and leads the teams behind its programming. Therefore, many are wondering whether Karamehmedović is behind the apology Velez had to make.
Almin Karamehmedović is the brother of Belmin Karamehmedović, the long-standing Director General of BHRT, the country’s public broadcaster.
Almin Karamehmedović joined ABC News in London as an editor in 1998, and later became one of the first journalists to get access to Tora Bora in Afghanistan, where Osama bin Laden was hiding.
In 2003, he joined the US military during the invasion of Iraq, and in 2005, he was one of the first journalists who traveled to Sudan to report on genocide.
He made a name for himself as a producer of the show “World News Tonight” on ABC News, and in his career, he won 16 Emmy awards, a prestigious DuPont award, nine “Edward R. Murrow” awards, and a Peabody award, classifying him among the most prominent television creators in the USA.
