CNN journalist Christiane Amanpour discussed the difference between objectivity and neutrality during her lecture last week for the Harrington School. Photo by Greg Clark.
“If I have one message, it is to be brave enough to tell the truth,” Christiane Amanpour said to the crowd. “Our job as reporters is not be liked or take the easy route. Our job is to do the really hard things, because we’ve been given a huge responsibility.”
The 12th annual Christiane Amanpour lecture, held at the University of Rhode Island, featured its namesake delivering a speech titled “Truthful, not Neutral,” on Thursday, Sept. 26.
Christiane Amanpour is CNN’s chief international anchor and host of its award-winning, flagship global affairs program “Amanpour.” She graduated summa cum laude in 1983 from URI with a Bachelor of Arts in journalism. She is known for her groundbreaking reports on both the Gulf War and the Bosnian War. She has received several awards, including Emmy awards, Peabody awards and honorary degrees in recognition of her outstanding work in the field of journalism.
Initially aspiring to be a doctor, Amanpour never thought she would enter the realm of journalism until she witnessed the compelling circumstances of the Iranian War when she returned home to Tehran.
“Everybody’s life was turned upside down,” Amanpour said. “I thought, ‘Wow this has been really interesting to witness from the ground level, from just outside the door of my house.’ I could open the door and see martial law enacted right outside, soldiers were patrolling, AK-47s and guns in our face. It was scary but it was something that motivated me. I wanted to tell these stories to the world; I wanted to be a journalist.”
After deciding to become a journalist, she realized that coming to America was vital to her pursuit of professional success. She cited her experiences at URI and WJAR Providence as indispensable pieces of her professional puzzle and a rock solid foundation, which gave her the opportunity to start her career as an entry level foreign desk assistant at CNN.
“I came on weekends and sometimes at night to try to learn the other parts of what I needed to do to get off the desk and get into writing and producing,” Amanpour said. “I really loved being part of a team that started at the bottom of the ladder and moved up. In my profession, if you’re not conscious that you are part of a team, it doesn’t work. Television is not about one person, it is about teamwork and camaraderie.”
After working her way up to becoming a foreign correspondent at CNN, she was given the opportunity to cover the Gulf War, which launched CNN internationally.
“The first Gulf War made CNN a global phenomenon because it was the first time that war in moving pictures and sounds and stories came into everybody’s living room,” Amanpour said. “That changed the face of news coverage globally. CNN created a media revolution. The world has not been the same since.”
Though she created a name for herself in the world of media and journalism after the Gulf War, her greatest journalistic challenge and eventual epiphany occurred when she covered the Bosnian War in Sarajevo, Bosnia from 1992 through 1996.
“For me this war was now a civil war which was building genocide, something that I now had to wrap around my head in a completely different way,” Amanpour said. “It affected me much more personally and deeply than the first Gulf War. We were telling stories of civilians who would be brutalized and besieged by Bosnian Serbs who wanted to ethnically cleanse parts of Bosnia to create a white nationalist Serbian entity.”
Amanpour recounts the Bosnian War being the leading story across all news networks for over three years. She associated that with the failure of international duty and action from democratic leaders across the world, which, under the Geneva Convention, emphasizes an immediate response to ethnic cleansing.
“We were the storytellers, so we were accused of having lost the plot,” Amanpour said.
“I particularly was accused of favoring the Muslims. I was shocked and upset and had to re-examine what I was doing. I realized what I had done was tell the truth. The truth was just one sided and unpalatable. Objectivity doesn’t mean neutrality. Objectivity means getting all sides of the story. When you mistakenly believe objectivity is neutrality, that means you start to try to make a false factual and moral equivalence. You then become an accomplice.”
Amanpour wrapped up her speech by stressing that the right to a free press and truth is a fundamental human right. She inspired many of her audience members by answering their questions on topics such as immigration, climate change, the effects of social media in journalism, safe spaces in universities and the significance of voting.
“It was phenomenal having her represent something so extraordinary and come here and let us know that she believes in our generation and the students on this campus to make things happen,” Leila Cox, a sophomore double majoring in communications and journalism said. “I’m a strong believer that everything happens for a reason and I believe that her being here has inspired me more to work on things that haven’t been worked on. I can’t wait to be a note-worthy journalist one day because words are power.”