'We are the Crusaders'

Amanpour Advocates for Good Journalism and the Continued Advance of Women

by Sherri Kimmel

January 2, 2010

Christiane Amanpour (left) talked with Senior Editor Sherri Kimmel about surmounting obstacles in her career path. “We tend not to want to suffer or feel pain, and loss and challenge and difficulties are sort of considered negatively. I have always used them as something positive and something to work through even when I wasn’t aware of doing that.”

At Commencement in May an honorary doctorate was awarded to  the International Women’s Media Foundation (IWMF). CNN chief international correspondent Christiane Amanpour, a member of the IWMF board of directors, accepted an honorary doctor of journalism on behalf of the organization. She also took time to speak with Sherri Kimmel, senior editor, about women’s roles in the media and her own journey to the top of her profession. An edited transcript follows, while audio of the interview  is also available online.

You and I both entered the journalism field in the early ’80s. With print, it was pretty much a “pink ghetto.” We were confined to the features section. How was it in broadcasting?

Probably the same. I came straight out of college. I got my first job at CNN right at the bottom of the rung, as the assistant on the foreign desk. I knew that I wanted to be a foreign correspondent, and the bottom was the best place to start. There were lots of women in the network, but when it came to overseas reporters there were hardly any. There were a few women out in the field as camerawomen and soundwomen but very few in executive or leadership positions. You realized you had to convince people that, as a woman, you could do any kind of job, whether it was management, whether it was on air, whether it was an important cameraperson’s job. So it was difficult. It’s changed a lot since then.

Can you talk about the role that your gender has played in your career—the ups and the downs? 

You know, to be frank, I always say that I don’t think it’s played a role. Maybe people perceive me as “a woman” or “a strong woman” or “a pain-in-the-neck woman,” or whatever. But I never played the gender card, and I simply was too unaware to play it. I was not political. I was not an activist. I grew up in Iran—this is before the Islamic Revolution. It might sound counter-intuitive, but there was quite a lot of female empowerment. The Shah, for all his other faults, had really raised the bar when it came to women’s legal rights. My mother was a very strong woman. My grandmother was a very strong woman. And I grew up knowing that women could do everything. And then when it came to the professional sphere, I didn’t really think twice. I really fought my way up that ladder, and I don’t believe being a woman hindered me. On the contrary, when I went into my job covering very traditional Islamic societies, whether it be Iran or Afghanistan, even in Saudi Arabia, where I was based in 1990 for the first Gulf War, I used it to my advantage. In our patriarchal society [men’s] first instinct is to be polite to a woman. I always used to take that as my first step. They would be polite, and I would stick my foot through the door and keep on going. However, women have a hard time in this business … being taken seriously. And certainly in positions of executive power there are not enough; they are underrepresented.

You’re hard charging out there with the men, in the thick of it. So opportunities for women definitely have advanced since we started.

Definitely. I also think it depends on your attitude. I didn’t grow up in the United States, so sometimes there can be power in obliviousness, if you know what I mean. I was not steeped in the [women’s] movement.

You didn’t know your place.

Exactly. I thought my place was equality. I had never grown up thinking that I was less than a man or I was less capable or I was less empowered. My whole life I was taught that if you’re smart enough and hard working enough you can get to where you want to go. Plus I started at 5 years old riding horses, and I was a competitive horse rider. I raced not just against women but against men, too. When you learn at that very young age, then the rest is society’s problem, not your problem.

I saw a piece that you had written about how you became a journalist and how riding horses factored in. That resonated so much with me because I had a half-Arab growing up. There was that fortitude and determination you learned if you were thrown from the horse …

Absolutely.

… you had to get right back on, because you couldn’t let the horse see your fear.

You’re absolutely right—fortitude, courage, not letting the animal sense your fear and then not having a choice. I had this fantastic riding teacher who was as strict as he was kind. And I rode on big horses, not little kiddy ponies. And some of them were Arab stallions. They’re jumpy in the best of times. You’d fall off and, literally, by the scruff of your neck at 5 years old they’d pick you up and put you back on again. That’s how I was brought up—to tough it out and to keep going. And I think that’s really helped me in my profession. Still, most of the big, on-air anchor jobs go to the men. There’s one woman in prime time on CNN, and all the rest are men. 

I am somewhat heartened, though, when I see folks like Judy Woodruff and Lesley Stahl who are older women, but they’re out there getting wonderful stories. 

Well, Judy and Lesley are professionals who started from the bottom, who are still going and who I don’t think traded on being a woman. I think they traded on their smarts and their competence. Everybody thinks that somehow it’s all luck or you had a benefactor or a mentor who put you somewhere. In the end it’s competence that keeps you there. They’re still there. Diane Sawyer is still there, too. Katie Couric is still there. She’s my generation.

So it does seem perhaps that the glass ceiling has risen a bit.

In some aspects. I’m constantly being contacted by young women who want to go into this business or who’ve tried and who are always telling me that they keep being assigned the “soft stories.” But I think the biggest problem is simply the self-destruction within the business as a whole. Journalism is killing itself—the newspapers and television. Everybody is ceding power, and content is power. Everybody is ceding that to the platforms. Somehow Twitter is meant to be better, hipper, more powerful, than a really great correspondent who’s gone out and traveled and found the news and the information and been able to make a difference doing that. What is journalism? Is it the power of the citizen? Or is it the power of a professional class of people who believe [journalism] requires educated, trained professionals who are held accountable? I find that very worrying, this whole business of citizen power, if it’s threatening to stampede the professionals in the business. 

So are you concerned about your own future in the business?

No, I’m not, because I have already had a 26-year career where I’ve been very fortunate to have had a boss like Ted Turner who believed in news, who believed in professionalism, who believed in the ability to change the world just by doing your job, who believed in the seriousness of the endeavor. I will keep lobbying to keep this profession afloat. People think that, hey, maybe we can do without news, maybe we can do without newspapers, maybe we can do without professional broadcasters. And I don’t think people have even stopped to think of those consequences. Nothing has held society accountable as the press has. Nothing has spearheaded or driven social reforms, cultural reforms, as the press has. And if that dies, our societies, from the United States down on around the world, are going to be not just poorer, but I think they will not be able to survive without a functioning free, rigorous press. There’s a reason that in the United States the press is called “the Fourth Estate.” It’s because they’ve contributed to society and to the civilization. We are the crusaders. 

Do you want to keep doing the job you’re doing? Do you have ideas for other things you’d like to do in the future?

I have a program [Amanpour, which debuted this fall] that will deal with big international topics or just plain interesting issues and interviews that are simply not getting a look at today. We’ll be really talking about the issues that matter and doing it in a smart way. We won’t talk down to our viewers. We won’t just do it from a narrow U.S.-centric perspective, although we’ll obviously relate it to how important it is to the United States, whether it’s what’s happening in Pakistan and Afghanistan, whether it’s the torture debate, whether it’s relations with Iran, whatever it might be.

So maybe more on the Edward R. Murrow model?

I hadn’t thought that, but I would love that. Obviously he remains a model. Everything he said, everything he’s done, still stands as our paragon of virtue. I have been remarkably lucky. I’ve worked for two people who are at the top of their game, Ted Turner who created CNN and then was on the cutting edge of every major issue, whether it was environmental, peace between the Soviet Union and the United States, nuclear disarmament or the pioneering of the modern billionaire philanthropy. He is a monumental example of courage and standing for something. And then I worked for Don Hewitt for nine years at 60 Minutes. I was the “other woman.” It was Lesley Stahl and me. I really thought I had died and gone to journalism heaven. It proves over and over again that serious news is sellable. Intelligent reporting is ratable. In other words, you get high ratings for it. It’s what you choose to do with what you have. You can choose to go down into the gutter where a certain segment of society would like you to be, or you can choose to take the high and interesting road, and people will follow. I’ve always believed that good journalism makes and means good business and not vice-versa.