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ID: PolicyCast features conversations with scholars and public leaders that explore research-driven policy solutions to the big and often complex problems we’re facing in our society and our world. This podcast is a production of the Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University.

Intro (Christiane Amanpour): I realized that as a foreign correspondent for an American network and also myself being foreign, that what I needed to do anyway, and this is my character anyway, was, was really tell people the truth. It was be able to tell them that this is what’s happening in Iraq or in Bosnia or Iran, or in Africa or Afghanistan, wherever it might be, in a way that they would know that I was not giving them a political story, that I was giving them the real news and that I wanted, as a consequence, for them to be able to trust me and to take me seriously, and for me to be credible. And the only way I can do that is by being apolitical and non-partisan, which doesn’t mean to say that I don’t stand up for the truth and the facts and, and what’s actually happening. But I think that that’s become incredibly difficult, in, in the US right now. There’s a lot, everything seems to be going political, and I think that is, that’s, that’s a problem too.

Intro (Ralph Ranalli): Hi. It’s Ralph Ranalli, back with a special Commencement edition of PolicyCast. Harvard graduations are a three-day affair, with distinguished guests invited to campus to address the graduates on the second day, which is also known as Class Day. This year’s Class Day speaker at the Kennedy School was award-winning international journalist and interviewer Christiane Amanpour. The daughter of an Iranian father and British mother, she was raised in Tehran until age 11, and finished her education in British boarding schools. She started with CNN as a lowly desk assistant in 1983, when she was fresh out of the University of Rhode Island and the network was basically a 3-year-old startup still trying to sell viewers and TV executives on the idea of a 24-hour news channel. She got her first big break covering the Iran-Iraq war, and through her reporting on everything from the fall of communism in Europe to the Persian Gulf War to the war in Bosnia, she basically became the de-facto face of CNN’s international coverage. Now based in London, she hosts the nightly shows “Amanpour” on CNN International and “Amanpour & Company” on PBS. She developed her philosophy of journalism—which she says favors the pursuit of objective truth over strict neutrality—while covering events like the bloody siege of Sarajevo. She also says that good journalism and democracy are inextricably linked, and that journalists and the public must speak out when either are threatened. She comes to the Kennedy School at a tumultuous time, as the Trump administration has attacked both Harvard and major news organizations in ways she says echo authoritarian regimes she’s covered over the years. She took some time out of her busy Class Day speaker schedule to share some thoughts.  

Ralph Ranalli: Christiane, welcome to PolicyCast.

Christiane Amanpour: Thank you. I’m really, really happy to be here. Happy to be at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.

Ralph Ranalli: Right. Thank you for coming to the Kennedy School. You know, I have to say it was pretty farsighted of us to invite a Class Day speaker who’s used to working in conflict zones. So we’re glad you’re here.  

Christiane Amanpour: You know, let me just interrupt you because I might even say, uh, I might have said in my speech that obviously Harvard and education is the front line of the current battle between the two halves of America. That’s the front line. It’s education.

Ralph Ranalli: Yeah. And I don’t think a year ago we would really imagine that we would be here. But I wanted to get a little bit of the benefit of your experience first. Your father is Iranian. You’ve lived in and had a lot of experience as a journalist covering a wide range of countries ranging from failed states to democracies to autocracies and dictatorships. So I have to ask you what experiences covering those places. Come to mind as you’re covering the United States right now?

Christiane Amanpour: Well, all those experiences really, and remember, I don’t actually cover the United States. I’m actually not based in the United States, so I have a little bit of a different role and a different perspective. I cover the United States from abroad. You know, this for me is a foreign news story. And it’s really interesting because given what you just said about A) my upbringing in what could only be called, well, it was a monarchy. And a monarchy is generally authoritarian, verging on the dictatorial. And then when I was of age, you know, 18, 19, that authoritarian system was overthrown by another one, which is an extreme Islamic religious republic it became.

So my whole upbringing has been in a non-democratic zone. So when I left Iran and I came to the United States as a first stop for my education, and then I went on to, to get my first job at CNN. It was my first experience with democracy. It was my first experience with the ability to be able to speak freely, to have free thoughts, to actually have thoughts that were political because before we weren’t allowed and so we didn’t, at least I didn’t at my age back then.

Ralph Ranalli: And you didn’t take them for granted.

Christiane Amanpour: Well, no, I never have taken it for granted because I’ve always seen how fiercely fought they are. So first I come over here to the US back in the early eighties, and I experience all this for the first time. Then I go abroad some 10 years later for CNN and each and every one of my, my assignments have been, as you said, in failed states, in dictatorships, in authoritarian countries, but also in emerging democracies as well.

Let’s take the former Soviet republics after the fall of the Soviet Union in, in, in 1991. All those nations that have been part of the Soviet Union became, at least they were trying to become, democracies. We call them emerging democracies and in many other parts of the world as well. And I saw one thing that, that made me very, very, um, it was very heartwarming. I saw that in many of these instances, journalists, local journalists were on the cutting edge of reform because they were the ones who were seeing and reporting and writing about what was happening in their own country, and suddenly they had the freedom to push the agenda of freedom, political rights, and democracy. So the idea of democracy and good solid journalism has been really, very, very important for me, and I’ve digested that, you know, throughout my career.

Ralph Ranalli: So you’ve said, and I’ve read this, that there are some situations where one simply, that one simply cannot be neutral about, because when you are neutral, you are an accomplice. And that objectivity, which is a word that’s sort of thrown around journalism a lot, doesn’t mean treating all sides equally. It means giving each side a hearing. Now, to me that seems to argue for sort of a values-based approach to journalism. Can you...

Christiane Amanpour: for me, it’s a...

Ralph Ranalli: ...it’s not necessarily...

Christiane Amanpour: ...it’s a truth-based approach to journalism

Ralph Ranalli: Right.

Christiane Amanpour: It’s neither a value of left or right. It’s a value of truth, honesty, and empirical facts. I still believe that the best journalism, journalism is the one that is based on evidence, investigative, uh, you know, experience and then the, the empirical facts that you get out.

Ralph Ranalli: Right.

Christiane Amanpour: What I was talking about...

Ralph Ranalli: I was really talking about truth as a value though.

Christiane Amanpour: Okay.

Ralph Ranalli: Because there are people who do not value truth...

Christiane Amanpour: Yes, true.

Ralph Ranalli: …who I think who are involved in some brands of journalism these days.

Christiane Amanpour: And nowadays, truth has become very fungible. And to be honest with you, thank God it came at the latter end of my career because boy, oh boy, I would’ve been confused if I had started out not knowing where the North Star was. Because you know we all have our moral compasses and generally, generally even places where people have not been brought up in the values of democracy and human rights. Individuals in those countries know what’s right. The, the dictatorial authoritarian, you know, brutal leadership might not know or might not want to implement, but people do know. So I actually think that there is a global adherence, and love of, the pursuit of truth. And I agree that it’s being knocked sideways every which way right now. And I’m very, very upset that many, um, American brands, let’s say all these tech companies that have taken over and are trying to take over our space, which is objective, fact-driven journalism, all this lot come over and they just, whatever, what anything goes, and they don’t care. Even when they know, and this is the worst because there is truth, even when they know that they’re not telling the truth, but they’re trying somehow to cater to their users, viewers, listeners, whatever you call them, they, they go ahead and do it. So they are hugely responsible for the cacophony of noise and the flood of information that’s coming our way without knowledge. You know, there’s a difference between a flood of information and knowledge.

But I want to pick up on what you said because it’s vitally important. Back in the early 1990s, I was covering the war in Bosnia. And just for, uh, your listeners and viewers to understand, it was at the end of the Soviet Union and also Yugoslavia, which had been a communist nation of constituent parts, fell apart. And each of those republics wanted what freedom, democracy, human rights to keep living in their, you know, ethnically mixed environments. They wanted nothing to do with this sudden, pure ethnic separation that a lot of these leaders were pursuing. And we called it ethnic cleansing. And eventually, at the international criminal court, um, war crimes court, it was adjudicated as genocide what was happening. So I, because I had been brought up to tell the truth and to be objective. Objectivity in journalism. I realized then in that kind of massively important situation where there’s a huge violation of basic international humanitarian law, i.e. an aggressor doesn’t just kill a civilian victim and we don’t call them equal. I mean, it’s just doesn’t happen.

But the world didn’t want to intervene. And so the world leaders, including in the United States, including in Europe democracies, remember were trying to say that both sides in this conflict were equally guilty. Okay? That was one phrase. The other was, oh, this is centuries of ethnic hatred, and no wonder is coming out into the open now that the strong hand of the communist dictator has gone. That was not true. All sides were not equally guilty. There was a clear aggressor backed by all the weapons and arms that they had, and there was a clear victim, and those were the, the, the citizens of Sarajevo and the other, other, other well-known towns that, that we know. But anyway, I realized when somebody said, “Oh, Christiane’s lost her objectivity and she’s siding with one side,” and by the way, that was somebody from within my own company. I’m not even gonna tell you who was a very prominent person, but I was worried because they’d been quoted in an article on me that the New York Times had done, and I was just so thrilled that the New York Times was doing an article on me. It was in 1994, and I was very upset about this.

But I went back and I thought, and I thought, and I thought, I said, what have I done wrong? Have I lost my objectivity? And I realized, no, no, I haven’t, actually, because I’ve been pursuing the truth. People don’t understand that objectivity actually means pursuing the truth, but you get there by giving all sides a hearing, which doesn’t mean treating all sides equally because when you treat all sides equally, then you are an accomplice in these extreme situations.

Ralph Ranalli: Right. And I think sort of the term being thrown around a lot these days about that sort of false objectivity, that mistaken objectivity, is false equivalents. I think you hear that a lot in the context of today’s journalism and particularly in the coverage of this administration where you have sort of this false equivalence where something is covered that is not normal, that breaks through norms or values that in some cases have been in place in our democracy and our democratic system for hundreds of years. And then the next day it’s sort of treated as old news that that norm was broken. What do you think is the source of this sort of rise in this kind of false equivalency, normalization journalism that’s become, I think, a problem for democracy?

Christiane Amanpour: Okay, so what I would first say is journalists have to be trained. They have to be trained to figure out what it is they’re seeing. You know, everybody else, every other career, has a training process. You get diplomas. You have to pass exams if you’re in law or medicine or whatever it is, right? But not in journalism. So I really believe that journalists have to be trained to understand what they’re seeing and then how to react to it. That’s basic. And it’s never happened because of course, journalists were always trained in how to write well and how to, you know, decide to go off here and there to do the stories. And all of this is amazing and great and we need people to do that. But it’s obviously clear, that in certainly the last 20, 25 years, the, the notion of knowing what you’re looking at and do you know what, let’s even go beyond this current situation. Let’s talk about 50 odd years of climate coverage. Just pull that out of the air. Can you believe that for that amount of time? Journalists have been thinking that they’re doing the right job by saying the climate crisis is equivalent to the climate deniers.

In other words, the science, the wealth of science, that tells us what’s going on, and we can see it in our own eyes right now has been equated to what we now know is a minority of deniers. We know that. And what we also know is that they are backed by very, very powerful lobby groups, like the fossil fuel industry, for instance. And so we have to recognize that if you go back, you know, several years, maybe a couple of decades, I can’t remember, 60 Minutes, did that to the tobacco company, right? The tobacco companies were saying, oh no, this is not dangerous. This doesn’t cause cancer. They knew it did. They had the data.

Ralph Ranalli: Right.

Christiane Amanpour: And it took a really important journalistic platform to out them. And now life is safer because actually we know that smoking kills and even secondary smoke kills. What was that? That was journalists who did that, in this case, journalists who pursued the facts, who, you know, who dug down, who never gave up and, and came up with the results. And things have changed since then. And unfortunately with climate, that hasn’t yet happened. Yeah. It hasn’t yet happened. And we are, you know, very close to midnight on the clock.

Ralph Ranalli: Right. I mean, it doesn’t make sense to me at least why climate is not the story.

Christiane Amanpour: Mm-hmm.

Ralph Ranalli: Every day. And I wanted to ask you about, because you had a front row seat, you were involved in CNN from the very beginning to when it was sort of like a...

Christiane Amanpour: A startup, I like to say.

Ralph Ranalli: It was a startup, an idea in Ted Turner’s head. Right. And but you’ve been in the industry through what you can only describe as a sort of a corporatization of the industry. You know? Now CNN is part of a giant, media conglomerate. You’ve said, i’m trying to find this, the, that news organizations have to stop thinking they’re cogs in a corporate empire. Sorry to keep throwing your words at you.

Christiane Amanpour: No, no, that’s okay.

Ralph Ranalli: And corporate empires.

Christiane Amanpour: Yeah.

Ralph Ranalli: Who unfortunately own news organizations now should give the news organizations the capacity to do their basic duty and their basic job, and that is to inform the public. What do you think the effect of that corporatization- because you know, people are trying to please their bosses in corporations and that doesn’t exclude reporters and the editors they report to, and the senior editors and the news executives that they report to- what do you think the effect of that corporatization of news has been on the ability to truly elevate stories that are important versus stories that are just merely interesting, that drive clicks and, and page views.

Christiane Amanpour: Look, I think we’re all, and it’s being written about endlessly. We’re in a very, very important moment where it’s all shaking down and it’s a turning point moment. How does what we call legacy media compete in the current digitization space? But also in what we talked about before, the social media space that has become news. People actually look at social media and they think that’s news. You know, and it’s not. So we are competing very, very hard for that. But look, I think I would just say, I’ve always been a pain in the neck, you know, and I’m very lucky that my, my work stands for itself. I’m very lucky to have been empowered from the beginning by Ted Turner. Obviously not when I started as a, you know, as a little chicken noodle. But as I grew more and more accomplished and I knew what I was doing and I did good stuff for the network. They trust me and they, you know, grit their teeth when I speak out. What I, what I think is that we have a Fourth Amendment in this country, right? Uh, sorry. We have a first, we have a First Amendment.

Ralph Ranalli: We have a lot of amendments.

Christiane Amanpour: You look at that, where she going with this amendment? We have a First Amendment in this country, which guarantees freedom of speech, freedom of press, et cetera. Journalists or journalism like to say they are the fourth estate because of the power vested by the constitution. Again, it’s a power that comes with it responsibility, and we have to, we have to know that. I think that it’s not just us, you know, in the trenches, not just the foot soldiers. I think also the owners have a duty under the fourth estate and the Constitution, they must also protect us. They must also be all in for the best kind of journalism. Truth-driven journalism, difficult journalism, journalism that holds power to account and all the rest of it. So that’s, that’s what I think.

And I tell you, you know, many of the old school magazine pieces I used to read about great moments in journalism... I remember for instance, reading something about CBS way back when it was the Tiffany News Network, but it also was owned by a corporation at one point. So the news was part of this big corporation. And yet, what did the corporate leaders do when they wanted to impress their advertisers or their whatevers? They brought out their top journalists. Right?

Ralph Ranalli: Right.

Christiane Amanpour: Because those are the people who matter. Those are the people who make a difference, and they realize that journalism was maybe a small, maybe not so rich a domain maybe, you know, for the shareholders and this and that. But in terms of reputation, trust, credibility, burnishing the whole corporation, the news division often did that. And so I would like them to remember that.

Ralph Ranalli: So turning to your remarks today to the students, I read a copy and in them you encourage this year’s Harvard Kennedy school graduates to exercise moral courage, speak up and not follow the herd. You also stress that dissent is not disloyalty, but part of the democratic process. But these are days, unfortunately, we’ve seen that there are... there can be real dangers that accompany that speaking out. You think of the case of the Tuft student who wrote an op-ed for her school newspaper.

Christiane Amanpour: Fortunately she’s out on bail. Right?

Ralph Ranalli: Fortunately she is now  

Christiane Amanpour: That didn’t just horrify journalists, that horrified people, all diverse people on campuses were very upset about them in, in, in general, everyday life. To see that image in the United States of America, of a girl being approached by, come on, unmarked vehicles, people in hoodies, I mean, these are people you’d run from. Right?

Ralph Ranalli: Right.

Christiane Amanpour: These are people who had looked dangerous. And they were for her, I mean, they picked her off the street. But I think what was really important is there was an outcry. People didn’t just let it go, and that’s what I’m talking about. You know, when you know something that’s being done in your name because you’re American is clearly wrong and hasn’t had due process, then, then, then you stand up. And I think that that’s what people have done. They’ve stood up, they’ve demanded due process at the very least, and she has been released on bail while her case continues. It’s not pleasant, you know, it’s very difficult to see this in the United States of America, let me tell you.

Ralph Ranalli: Yeah. And there are direct attacks, not just on education, but also on journalism. You have. White House doing things like banning the Associated Press...

Christiane Amanpour: mm-hmm.

Ralph Ranalli: Cutting back funding for NPR and PBS. And I know your show is also on public television.

Christiane Amanpour: PBS, that’s right.

Ralph Ranalli: You have an interesting perspective ’cause you have one foot in sort of a corporate journalism world and one foot and the non-profit journalism world.  

Christiane Amanpour: To me it makes no difference. I do exactly the same work for both and it’s never made a difference. I have never judged, as I’m doing a story or covering a story, who’s the boss? Is it corporate? Is it this? Is it that? It’s never, it’s always what is the story and who am I trying to reach and who am I talking to? And I feel very gratified that somehow, by myself without being told yes, you know what to do and what not to do. I realized that as a foreign correspondent for an American network and also myself being foreign, that what I needed to do anyway, and this is my character anyway, was, was really tell people the truth. It was be able to tell them that this is what’s happening in Iraq or in Bosnia or Iran, or in Africa or Afghanistan, wherever it might be, in a way that they would know that I was not giving them a political story, that I was giving them the real news and that I wanted, as a consequence, for them to be able to trust me and to take me seriously, and for me to be credible. And the only way I can do that is by being apolitical and non-partisan, which doesn’t mean to say that I don’t stand up for the truth and the facts and, and what’s actually happening. But I think that that’s become incredibly difficult, in, in the US right now. There’s a lot, everything seems to be going political, and I think that is, that’s, that’s a problem too.

Ralph Ranalli: Yeah. I mean, democracy and journalism have this sort of symbiotic relationship, right? You can’t have democracy without a free flow of information, and you can’t have journalism without the freedoms sort of guaranteed...

Christiane Amanpour: Mm-hmm.

Ralph Ranalli: ...by democracy. So, do you think that journalism and the industry and journalists in particular have done enough to stand up, not for individual stories or just sort of the truth of a particular story, but for the craft itself, for journalism itself, for the importance of the field, because it’s come under such attack. I mean, these attacks have been going on for a long time on mainstream journalism.

Christiane Amanpour: They have, and you know, you, you, you said, in your previous question, you correctly said that the AP had been barred by the Trump administration from the White House. You know, that’s been reversed, so that’s a victory for, for journalists. But it’s not the first time. Back in the 1970s, and you can read it in any newspaper or in, in Catherine Graham, the publisher of the Washington Post, her memoirs, you know, uh, president Nixon had been overwhelmingly reelected. Then all this Watergate stuff happened, which the Washington Post was leading, and the president and the executive hated the Washington Post, and they barred them from the White House. Hello, that was, you know, however many years ago. So history keeps repeating itself. They barred reporters, they barred photographers. And Catherine Graham’s, you know quoted as saying: “We were under huge pressure.” They threatened some of their TV licenses ’cause they also owned tv, stations around the country. We were under huge pressure. We were scared because this administration had just been overwhelmingly reelected and, you know, they were coming after us. But, you know, they stuck to their guns. The Washington Post stuck to their guns by what? Telling an accurate fact-based story and, you know, everybody realizing that they were actually telling the truth.

When you ask about do we stand up for our own craft? Well, I spent my whole career, it seems to be standing up for my own craft and whatever speech I make, wherever I go, I’m always, always doing that. And I think that we have to. And I think, you know, one of the lines in, in my speech to the graduates, and I think this, this goes not just for journalists, but for anybody. We have a free press still in the United States. We have a First Amendment, but if we do not defend it, then we will be as culpable, if it’s lost. It’ll be on our heads as well. And I think that’s the same for many, many, many institutions. You know, you have to defend what you believe in. And I do also strongly believe, and again this is forged, you know, from my experience in the field. You know, NATO has an Article five. What does it mean? Attack on one? As an attack on, or I feel that an attack on one of us is an attack on all of us. Like if an administration is coming after one of us and. Singling out one of us for something, then we should all stand in solidarity. I probably would’ve, would’ve not gone to the White House and, and have urged the rest not to go to sit it out until we can sort it out.

Ralph Ranalli: Right.

Christiane Amanpour: Ooh, that’s nice. Sit it out until we can sort it out.

Ralph Ranalli: Yeah. Somebody trademark that. Quick, quick.

Christiane Amanpour: I like that.

Ralph Ranalli: Actually you sort of went to where I wanted to go. So as we wrap up, which is sort of looking forward, looking to the future...

Christiane Amanpour: Mm-hmm.

Ralph Ranalli: What direction would you like to see the news industry go in order for it to be stronger, more true to its mission, and for it to be a more valuable contributor to democracy and society? What do you think are your top...

Christiane Amanpour: Well...

Ralph Ranalli: ...desires for the a direction of the future.

Christiane Amanpour: First of all, I do think that it is still in the United States and in many parts of the world. I live in England. We have a very robust journalistic operation there. I do think that sometimes everybody gets scared and I think we have to just sort of, you know, sit up straight, grab the reins and, and figure out what our job is and to be able to, to be able to do it. Because if we don’t, who will? But I also say this at a time when, as we discussed at the beginning, legacy journalism, I think that’s what people call it, mainstream journalism. IE those of us who believe it’s a craft who believe there are paradigms, sorry, rules around it. And you know, there’s boundaries to how we perform, and how we tell the news. And those are, you know, find the facts, make sure they’re true, be able to fact check, report them. It’s quite simple. But we need to keep being able to do that.

And I know it’s a money thing too, I mean, everybody’s under financial pressure. We need to still keep sending people all over, even in this country. You have a real problem where there aren’t enough local news gatherers. Now I have friends, some of them are based here, who have these new institutions where they’ve been going on for, for a bit, but training local journalists, making sure they’re able to operate in local news. Look how many times have the national news in this country got the election wrong. Right?

Ralph Ranalli: Right.

Christiane Amanpour: Why? In my opinion, because they’re sitting around in a bubble, which is a Washington bubble, which is not the same bubble as the rest of the world lives in. And all those people who actually have thoughts and are, you know, happy or angry about whatever, generally don’t get heard.

Ralph Ranalli: Right.

Christiane Amanpour: But that’s basic. We have to pay tribute to going out and getting the story. So whatever way it is, mindful of the really terrible financial situation and everything that’s going on, we gotta figure out how to cover all the things that are important, not just something over here or something. Not, not just the, the, the shiny, bright things, right? Yeah. And I think we can do it, you know, some people say, oh, won’t it be boring? How can you tell who wants to know about a town hall meeting or the city board, or the blah blah, blah? And I’m like, no, these are just human stories.

Ralph Ranalli: Right.

Christiane Amanpour: These are human stories and endlessly Interesting.

Ralph Ranalli: Yeah. My favorite way to describe that, oh, has always been the difference between journalism and infotainment. Journalism is taking that which is important and making it interesting and infotainment is taking that which is merely interesting and making it try to seem important. Trying to make it. Yeah. So, so thank you for doing journalism and thank you for being here. This has been a really interesting conversation and I’m...

Christiane Amanpour: my pleasure.

Ralph Ranalli: ...glad we were having a chance to see you.

Christiane Amanpour: Thank you.

Outro (Ralph Ranalli): Thanks for listening. Remember, PolicyCast will be bringing you new episodes throughout the summer, so you can bring our insightful and informative conversations about policy with you to the beach, to the park, or on your morning walk or run. And of course following us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcasting app makes doing that much easier. And no matter where you are, please remember to speak bravely and listen generously.