An Amanpour report validates a story's importance. She's often given entree where other reporters are neither welcomed nor allowed. She's an authority on Islam with extensive Middle East connections. Bill Clinton calls her the voice of humanity; critics in the Pentagon tag her as overly emotional and even biased.
Amanpour was in the Baghdad courtroom on October 19, 2005 when Saddam Hussein made his first trial appearance. She, along with the late Peter Jennings, was also at Hussein's initial hearing in 2004.
Amanpour was the broadcast host of the September 2005 gathering of world leaders for President Clinton's Global Initiative Summit, which raised $1.25 billion in commitments. Time magazine called her the most influential foreign correspondent since Edward R. Murrow.
Education - From age 11, attended two Roman Catholic all-girls' schools in Great Britain. Graduated Summa Cum Laude from University of Rhode Island in 1983 with a BA in Journalism.
Family - Married since 1998 to James (Jamie) Rubin, US State Department spokesman under President Clinton; one son, Darius, born in 2000.
Many find it unusual that Amanpour, raised in Islamic Iran, married a man of the Jewish faith tradition.
Based in London, she's reported from war zones in Iraq, Israel, Iran, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Rwanda and beyond. She's also secured innumerable exclusive interviews with world leaders.
2003 British Prime Minister Tony Blair, French President Jacques Chirac just prior to the War in Iraq
2003 Mahmoud Abbas, first Palestinian Prime Minister
2002 Palestinian President Yasser Arafat, in isolation in his Ramallah headquarters. (Arafat hung up on her after a shouting match.)
2001 Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf during the war against Afghanistan
1999 Mikhail Gorbachev on the 10th anniversary of Communism's fall
1997 Mohammad Khatami, new President of Iran
2000 Edward R. Murrow Award for Distinguished Achievement in Broadcast Journalism
2002 Harvard's Goldsmith Career Award for Journalism
Two Emmy news/documentary awards
Two George Foster Peabody Awards for Broadcasting
Two George Polk Awards for Journalism
1994 Woman of the Year, New York Chapter of Women in Cable
Courage in Journalism Award, International Women's Media Foundation
Major role in two duPont awards and a Golden Cable Ace award given to CNN
Christiane Amanpour is described as modest, private and quite magnetic. Her reporting is unfailingly hard-hitting, accurate and insightful. She's often pictured on-camera sans make-up and in an ever-present, unglamorous flak jacket. She was named 1997 Iranian Woman of the Year.
"I think that as a country that is so powerful, so good in its values, so determined to spread values such as democracy, morality around the world...it's absolutely vital...that the people of the United States get a look at what's going on outside. It's our role and it's our job to be able to go to these places and bring back stories, just as a window on the world."
"I remember once doing a live shot from a so-called famine camp in Ethiopia---and actually in Somalia as well. I was showing a man and telling his story and explaining how ill he was, and it was a live camera. All of a sudden, I realized that he was dying. And I didn't know what to do, I didn't know how to break that moment, how to get the camera away, what to do that would not sully what was happening in real life. And then there's always the crying and the weeping that we hear.....children, women, even men. And these images and these sounds are always with me...."
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"...a strange thing has happened, something I never expected. Sadly, (my) marriage and motherhood have coincided with the demise of journalism as I knew it and I dreamt that it would always be. I am no longer sure that when I go out there and do my job, it'll even see the light of air, if the experience of my colleagues is anything to go by.
More times than I care to remember, I have sympathized with too many of them assigned like myself, to some of the world's royal bad places. They would go through hell to do their pieces, only to frequently find them killed back in New York, because of some fascinating new twist on 'killer Twinkies' or Fergie getting fatter or something. I have always thought it morally unacceptable to kill stories...that people have risked their lives to get."
