{"id":1041,"date":"2019-03-25T10:07:14","date_gmt":"2019-03-25T14:07:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/?p=1041"},"modified":"2019-03-29T16:20:54","modified_gmt":"2019-03-29T20:20:54","slug":"staying-steely-christiane-amanpour-on-success-and-staying-power","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/issues\/spring-2019\/staying-steely-christiane-amanpour-on-success-and-staying-power\/","title":{"rendered":"Staying Steely: Christiane Amanpour on Success and Staying Power"},"content":{"rendered":"

Staying Steely<\/h1>

Christiane Amanpour on Success and Staying Power<\/p>\n

By Mike Malone<\/em><\/p><\/div><\/div>

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Photo: Mark Reinertson, courtesy Broadcasting & Cable<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Masterfully negotiating war zones and TV network politics, acclaimed journalist Christiane Amanpour \u201983 has earned great trust and respect for her award-winning coverage of foreign conflicts\u2014from the Gulf War to the breakup of Yugoslavia.<\/p>\n

On October 29, 2018, the CNN anchor and chief international correspondent was inducted into the Broadcasting & Cable Hall of Fame. Mike Malone \u201991 attended the event and talked with Amanpour about starting her career in Rhode Island, fake news, #MeToo, and her new show,<\/em> Amanpour and Company.<\/p>\n

\n

Christiane Amanpour was inducted into the Broadcasting & Cable Hall of Fame for her standout 35-year career in television journalism. She was honored alongside CBS Morning News<\/em> anchor Gayle King, NBCUniversal advertising chief Linda Yaccarino, and Charlie Collier, then-president and general manager at AMC\/SundanceTV, among others. She thanked her son, Darius, for making her \u201ca better person, a better journalist, and a better public servant.\u201d<\/p>\n

Amanpour on Fake News and the #MeToo Movement<\/h1>

<\/p>\n

Fake News<\/h2>\n

Amanpour says President Donald Trump\u2019s denouncements of \u201cfake news\u201d represent a unique challenge for the journalists who cover him, although she notes that Trump is hardly the first president to charge the media with producing falsehoods. She asserts, \u201cIn President Trump\u2019s view, fake news is just \u2018stuff I don\u2019t want to hear,\u2019\u201d she says, \u201c\u2018stuff I don\u2019t like.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

#MeToo<\/h2>\n

Energized by the challenge of covering the #MeToo movement, Amanpour notes that the issue directly affects half the world\u2019s population. She describes it as \u201cthe desire for simple justice and a level playing field. Up until now, if it\u2019s happened at all, it\u2019s been in teeny-weeny baby steps.\u201dIncidentally, the #MeToo movement indirectly led to Amanpour taking on a new show, Amanpour and Company<\/em>. Her show replaced Charlie Rose\u2019s PBS talk show, which was canceled after sexual misconduct allegations against him surfaced.<\/p><\/div><\/div><\/div>\n

Addressing the ballroom, Amanpour pushed for action regarding the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Later in her speech, she quoted F. Scott Fitzgerald, who said, \u201cThe test of a firstrate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.\u201d<\/p>\n

Amanpour spent her childhood in both Iran and England and aspired to become an ER doctor. But, as she watched the Islamic Revolution unfold in the late 1970s, she decided she wanted to be a journalist instead. Being an ER doctor and a war correspondent are \u201cpractically two sides of the same coin,\u201d she says. Both deal in trauma, and both push their practitioners to find the resolve to do their jobs amid exorbitant human misery.<\/p>\n

With her new career goals in mind, Amanpour took the SATs and applied to the University of Rhode Island. \u201cI had friends and family who helped me navigate the very complex route from being abroad to getting into a U.S. university,\u201d she says. \u201cI was very pleased to end up there.\u201d<\/p>\n

Studying journalism in Kingston, she landed an internship at WJAR in Providence\u2014which she calls \u201ca brilliant news town\u201d\u2014and was mentored by Jim Taricani, who headed the investigative department at the station. \u201cHe\u2019s always been incredibly helpful and encouraging,\u201d says Amanpour, who calls Rhode Island her \u201chome state.\u201d<\/p>\n

After she graduated in 1983, Amanpour moved on to CNN in Atlanta, Georgia. She started in an entry-level position but moved up quickly to bureau positions in New York and Frankfurt, Germany. After Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, she went to the Middle East and promptly established herself as a savvy, steely war reporter willing to go toe-to-toe with world leaders.<\/p>\n

September 2018 marked the 35th anniversary of Amanpour\u2019s start at CNN. \u201cIt\u2019s been my training ground, my home,\u201d she says, singling out founder Ted Turner for his commitment to 24\/7 TV news.<\/p>\n

911±¬ΑΟ is also visibly represented on the national level at CNN, where award-winning journalist John King \u201985 is chief national correspondent. Amanpour says she first met King when he was an Associated Press reporter during the Gulf War. \u201cThat\u2019s when we first became friends,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

Amanpour\u2019s latest project is Amanpour and Company<\/em>, a news and public affairs program that premiered on PBS in September 2018. She still hosts the nightly global affairs interview show, Amanpour<\/em>, on CNN, and says she plans to keep plugging away in news, giving a voice to those who may not have one. \u201cI\u2019m just happy that I\u2019m a woman of a certain age, in this day and age, who can keep on keeping on,\u201d she says. \u201cI think that\u2019s a triumph.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mike Malone is a 1991 graduate of 911±¬ΑΟ and an editor and reporter at the television trade magazine<\/em> Broadcasting & Cable.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Christiane Amanpour was inducted into the Broadcasting & Cable Hall of Fame for her standout 35-year career in television journalism.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":12,"featured_media":1259,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[43],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1041","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-spring-2019","architecture-features"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1041","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/12"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1041"}],"version-history":[{"count":21,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1041\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1675,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1041\/revisions\/1675"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1259"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}