Iron Lady

Christiane Amanpour, born January 12, 1958) is the Global Affairs Anchor of ABC News. She is the host of CNN International's nightly interview program Amanpour, the network's Chief International Correspondent and runs the website Amanpour.com for the network's digital platform. She is a board member of the International Women's Media Foundation

Raised in Tehran, Amanpour was born in London, England to Iranian father Mohammad, a Persian airline executive, and British mother, Patricia. After completing her primary education in Iran, she was sent by her parents to boarding school in England when she was 11. She attended New Hall School, an all-girls school located in Chelmsford, Essex, England. Christiane and her family returned to England not long after the Islamic Revolution began. She has stressed that they were not forced to leave the country, but were actually returning to England when Iraq invaded Iran. The family eventually remained in England, finding it difficult to return to Iran.

After her graduation from New Hall, Amanpour moved to the United States to study journalism at the University of Rhode Island. During her time there, she worked in the news department at WBRU-FM in Providence, Rhode Island. She also worked for NBC affiliate WJAR in Providence, Rhode Island, as an electronic graphics designer.In 1983, Amanpour graduated from the university summa cum laude with a bachelor of journalism degree.

 

CNN

In 1983, she was hired by CNN on the foreign desk in Atlanta, Georgia, as an entry-level desk assistant. During her early years as a correspondent, Amanpour was given her first major assignment covering the Iran-Iraq War, which led to her being transferred in 1986 to Eastern Europe to report on the fall of European communism. In 1989, she was assigned to work in Frankfurt, Germany, where she reported on the democratic revolutions sweeping Eastern Europe at the time. Through this position, she was able to move up in the company and by 1990 served as a correspondent for CNN's New York bureau.

Following Iraq's occupation of Kuwait in 1990, Amanpour's reports of the Persian Gulf War brought her wide notice while also taking the network to a new level of news coverage. Thereafter, she reported from the Bosnian war and other conflict zones. Because of her emotional delivery from Sarajevo during the Siege of Sarajevo, viewers and critics questioned her professional objectivity, claiming that many of her reports were unjustified and favoured the Bosnian Muslims, to which she replied, "There are some situations one simply cannot be neutral about, because when you are neutral you are an accomplice. Objectivity doesn't mean treating all sides equally. It means giving each side a hearing."Amanpour gained a reputation for being fearless during the Gulf and Bosnian wars from parachuting into conflict areas.

From 1992 to 2010, Amanpour was CNN's chief international correspondent as well as the anchor of Amanpour, a daily CNN interview program that aired from 2009–2010. Amanpour has reported on major crises from many of the world's hotspots, including Iraq, Afghanistan, the Palestinian territories, Iran, Israel, Pakistan, Somalia, Rwanda, and the Balkans and from the United States during Hurricane Katrina. She has secured exclusive interviews with world leaders from the Middle East to Europe to Africa and beyond, including Iranian Presidents Mohammad Khatami and Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, as well as the presidents of Afghanistan, Sudan, and Syria, among others.[citation needed] After 9/11, she was the first international correspondent to interview British Prime Minister Tony Blair, French President Jacques Chirac, and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf.

From 1996 to 2005, she was contracted by 60 Minutes creator Don Hewitt to file four to five in-depth international news reports a year as a special contributor. These reports garnered her a Peabody Award in 1998 (she had earlier been awarded one in 1993). Hewitt's successor Jeff Fager was not a fan of her work and terminated her contract.

She has had many memorable moments in her career, one of them being a telephone interview with Yasser Arafat during the siege on his compound in March 2002, during which Arafat hung up on her.

Bosnian War reporting

On 22 December 1992, during the Bosnian War, Amanpour was reporting from Kiseljak, not far from Sarajevo. Kiseljak was in Croat hands, undamaged, and ostensibly well supplied with necessities. Amanpour reported that,

 "While people in Sarajevo are dying from starvation, the Serbs are living [in Kiseljak] in plenty," a report that was subsequently criticized by some analysts as spreading "misinformation" and "beautiful lies."

On October 9, 1994, Stephen Kinzer of the New York Times criticized Amanpour's coverage, in general, of the Bosnian War. Kinzer quoted a colleague’s description of Amanpour as she reported on a terrorist bombing in the Markale marketplace of the Bosnian city of Sarajevo:

"[Christiane Amanpour] was sitting in Belgrade when that marketplace massacre happened, and she went on the air to say that the Serbs had probably done it. There was no way she could have known that. She was assuming an omniscience which no journalist has."

In January 2004, prosecutors in the trial against Stanislav Galić, a Serb general in the siege of Sarajevo, introduced into evidence a report including the testimony of ammunition expert Berko Zečević. Working with two colleagues, Zečević's investigation revealed a total of six possible locations from which the shell in the first Markale massacre could have been fired, of which five were under VRS and one under ARBiH control. The ARBiH site in question was visible to UNPROFOR observers at the time, who reported that no shell was fired from that position. Zečević further reported that certain components of the projectile could only have been produced in one of two places, both of which were under the control of the Army of Republika Srpska. The court would eventually find Galić guilty of all the five shellings prosecutors had charged him with, including Markale's. Amanpour has responded to the criticism leveled on her reporting from the war in the former Yugoslavia for "lack of neutrality," stating:

"Some people accused me of being pro-Muslim in Bosnia, but I realised that our job is to give all sides an equal hearing, but in cases of genocide you can't just be neutral. You can't just say, 'Well, this little boy was shot in the head and killed in besieged Sarajevo and that guy over there did it, but maybe he was upset because he had an argument with his wife.' No, there is no equality there, and we had to tell the truth."

The segment labelled "Democratic Reporting" has been eliminated because it only cited conservative sources critical of Ms. Amanpour or anyone responsible for reporting on issues in ways that conflict with the conservative ideology or narrative..

 

ABC News

On March 18, 2010, Amanpour announced she would leave CNN for ABC News, where she would anchor This Week. She said, “I’m thrilled to be joining the incredible team at ABC News. Being asked to anchor This Week in the superb tradition started by David Brinkley is a tremendous and rare honor, and I look forward to discussing the great domestic and international issues of the day. I leave CNN with the utmost respect, love, and admiration for the company and everyone who works here. This has been my family and shared endeavor for the past 27 years, and I am forever grateful and proud of all that we have accomplished.”She hosted her first broadcast on August 1, 2010.

During her first two months as host, the ratings for This Week reached their lowest point since 2003. On February 28, 2011, she interviewed Muammar Gaddafi and his sons Saif al-Islam and Al-Saadi al-Gaddafi.

On December 13, 2011, ABC announced Amanpour would be leaving her post as anchor of ABC News' This Week on January 8, 2012, and returning to CNN International, where she had previously worked for 27 years, and maintaining a reporting role at ABC News.

 

Return to CNN

A day later on December 14, 2011, in statements by ABC and CNN, it was announced that, in a "unique arrangement," Amanpour would begin hosting a program on CNN International in 2012, while continuing at ABC News as a global affairs anchor.

It was later revealed that in the spring of 2012, CNN International would refresh its lineup, putting the interview show Amanpour back on air.On-air promotions said she would return to CNN International on April 16. Her 30-minute New York-recorded show - to be screened twice an evening - would mean that the US parent network's Piers Morgan Tonight interview show would be 'bumped' out of its 9:00pm (Central European Time) slot to midnight (CET).

 

Personal life

Amanpour is a member of the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) along with many other notable journalists.

Amanpour is married to James Rubin, a former Assistant Secretary of State and spokesman for the US State Department during the Clinton administration and currently an informal adviser to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and President Barack Obama. Their son, Darius John Rubin, was born in 2000. The family resides in New York City.

She shared a house on the east side of Providence with John F. Kennedy, Jr. and some of his friends while he was attending Brown University and she was attending the University of Rhode Island.

Amanpour speaks English and Persian fluently.

Screen and media appearances

Amanpour appeared in the Gilmore Girls as herself in the television series finale. Throughout the series, Amanpour was an inspiration to aspiring journalist Rory Gilmore. In July 2009 she appeared in a Harper's Bazaar magazine article entitled "Christiane Amanpour Gets a High-Fashion Makeover".

Amanpour played herself in newscasts in the films Iron Man 2 and Pink Panther 2.