Christiane Amanpour will not be a stranger to anyone who hankers for international news. Her husky voice and British-accent is familiar to CNN viewers around the world where Amanpour serves as CNN’s chief international anchor. In the raging war between Russia and Ukraine, you won’t get the complete coverage of the war unless you hear Amanpour’s report.
Amanpour was born in London to an Iranian father and a British mother 64 years ago. Her father was a Shi’ite Muslim, while her mother was a Catholic. She grew up in Tehran until she was 11 years old. Coming from a well-to-do family, her parents sent her to an exclusive girls boarding school in England, after completing her primary school in Tehran. After her high school, they returned to Iran before the Islamic Revolution broke out. It was a move that the family regretted. The revolution turned their lives upside down. Martial law was imposed and soldiers and tanks roamed the streets. Innocent people, including their friends and relatives, were arrested and some were executed. Deeply concerned about the return of the Ayatollah to Iran, the family returned to England but this time under a vastly different circumstance. His wealthy father had lost his fortune and whatever funds left had been frozen. This time, Amanpour was on her own as her parents could hardly support her. Before, Amanpour had entertained the idea of attending a medical school, but the family could no longer afford it. About the same time, her younger sister was enrolled in a journalism college in London but she dropped out after realizing that writing did not suit her. The school refused to refund the school fees they had paid, so Amanpour decided to take her sister’s place. Initially, there was nothing about journalism that attracted her, but it was her only opportunity to attend college. After finishing the term, she found out she liked the profession and decided to go to the US to get the best education for would-be writers. She realized that living through the revolution in her country had whetted her appetite for political and international events. It was then that her dream to become a foreign correspondent was born. After several applications, Amanpour was admitted to the University of Rhode Island in the US. To support her studies, she worked in the news department of a local station and as a graphic designer in an NBC affiliate company in Providence, Rhode Island. She was placed at the nerve center of a TV news program, which truly fascinated her. She excelled in her studies and graduated summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa with a degree in journalism in 1983. And there was no holding her back from pursuing her colorful career in journalism.
Amanpour applied for a job at the CNN in Atlanta and was accepted as a desk assistant. While some were helpful to the new hire, many were disparaging. Oftentimes, she was told that her British accent and different culture would not encourage viewership. Her foreign sounding name alone would not promote trust. “Amanpour? It will never fly on television.” She was not obviously the favorite of her boss, and Amanpour, in her own words, lamented that her superior “belittled her ambition at every possible turn.” She recalled her boss would say to her, “CNN is certainly not the place for you. You’ll have to go off to some small market and work your way up.” And she would regale visiting CNN executives of Amanpour’s big dream to be a foreign correspondent, before ordering her to serve them coffee and cookies. Up to now, she remembers that “sometimes tears of frustration and rage would pour down my face; but I was determined to press on. I wasted no time. The minute I found out CNN was looking for a writer, I bolted off the desk, got the job, and began writing news copy for the anchors. Then I moved to senior writer.”
She got her first foreign assignment when CNN needed a correspondent’s position in their Frankfurt office. The post was offered to three others before her but they all declined. “Hey, I’ll go anywhere,” and she got the job. She reported on the fall of communism in Eastern Europe and the democratic upheavals in the Soviet Union and the countries under its sphere of influence. When Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait, she went to the Persian Gulf to cover the event, the hottest story at that time. After that, she has reported on many major international crises erupting in many hot spots in the Middle East, Africa and Europe. She has risked her life covering the armed conflicts in Iraq, Iran, Palestine, Israel, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bosnia, Yugoslavia, Somalia and other troubled spots.
Amanpour is an accomplished interviewer sought after by newsmakers. She has conducted personal interviews with world leaders, including Shah Reza Pahlavi, Yassir Arafat, Muammar Gaddafi, Tony Blair, Jacques Chirac, Pervez Musharraf, Angela Merkel, and many other famous figures and celebrities. Being subjected to Amanpour’s insightful and incisive grilling brings out the best or worst from the powerful personalities she interviews. While doing a live interview, Arafat banged his phone and hung up on her when Amanpour asked him piercing questions. One is not a hot copy if he is not interviewed by Amanpour.
Her unique brand of journalism and reportage has brought her honors and recognition. She won her first Peabody Award in 1993 while still a young journalist. She replicated it in 1998. She also received the George Polk Award for television reporting, not once but twice. She received an Emmy Award for news and documentary reporting. In 1994, she was awarded the “Woman of the Year” by the New York Chapter of Women in Cable and winner of the Courage in Journalism Award by the International Women’s Media Foundation. She was named the “Persian Woman of the Year” in 2007, and winner of the Fourth Estate Award from the National Press Club. Amanpour’s awards are too many to mention here.
Amanpour has been with CNN for close to four decades. Except for her brief stint with ABC News, she has spent the best years of her life with CNN where she has become one of its most celebrated foreign correspondents. She admits that “it’s been a long and fascinating journey for me, and every step of the way has demanded hard work. My early experience at CNN taught me to have clarity of vision—to know what I wanted and to have the courage and stamina to pursue my goals.” And she adds: “People will always try to knock you down in life—and knock your dreams. In a peculiar way, that’s not such a bad thing. In the end, it gives you the opportunity to prove you want it enough, and that you’re strong enough to keep going.”
Wars have not stopped Amanpour from bringing to the comfort of our bedrooms the glory and horrors of war in Ukraine. She was diagnosed with ovarian cancer in June last year but she has stayed at the war front to give us a blow-by-blow account of the hostilities where it happens, how it happens, and as it happens. And to think that she’s only an accidental journalist.