URI grad Amanpour gets higher TV profile

Veteran CNN foreign correspondent Christiane Amanpour’s new late-night public affairs show on PBS, "Amanpour & Company," will explore issues around the country and around the world.

It’s a story that begins, in many ways, here in Rhode Island.

“I owe it all to Rhode Island,” Amanpour said in an interview on Monday, the launch day of her new show. “Without Rhode Island this would not be happening.”

Amanpour is a 1983 graduate of the University of Rhode Island, and had her first job at NBC affiliate WJAR. Whether she was wired up for a story or trying to make weather graphics, Amanpour learned in Rhode Island that it was important to work hard, to have a dream and to go for the hard truth, rather than the easy opinions.

A joint production of New York PBS station WNET and CNN, "Amanpour & Company" will try to do just that, its host said.

“I want to provide a bit more time to dig down a little bit, understand a bit more, and have a chance to reflect, and not try to tie myself to the paradigm of perpetual conflict,” Amanpour said.

She got her most recent opportunity after PBS canceled Charlie Rose’s interview show; Rose is accused by numerous women of sexual harassment and misconduct. Now, a woman will take over the late-night time slot.

The hour-long show, then, comes at a time of reckoning about how women are treated in the workplace, in the media and everywhere else.

“It’s an important message that I’m taking on this role at this time, for women and for our insistence that we be taken seriously — that we’re not tokens, we’re vital, vital players in this and every other professional activity,” Amanpour said.

Amanpour’s first stop in America was in Rhode Island, she said. Having lived in Iran and then England, she did not look like or sound like most people on TV at the time, in the early 1980s. Meanwhile, the revolution in Iran was changing things there and closing off opportunities for someone who had dreamed of a career in journalism.

So, the dream found its launching pad in Rhode Island, on and off campus. She lived with people who went to Brown University, and developed fond memories of Providence — from its culture to its cast of colorful characters. The Talking Heads. RISD. Food and art.

“It was very, very edgy,” Amanpour said.

She had an internship at WJAR, working on the investigative team under legendary journalist Jim Taricani. She learned the ins and outs of hunting for facts as a “factotum,” or a jack-of-all-trades, for the team.

Amanpour graduated with a journalism degree, and got a job at WJAR as an electronic graphics operator, which, she says, sounds more important than it actually is: She would type in names and titles that appear on screen, and work on the weather, too. She occasionally would make a small mistake on the weather and the weatherman would call her out on the air.

“It sharpened my skills of concentration, and taught me that you can’t make mistakes on live television,” Amanpour said.

Later, after a WJAR director had left for this relatively new thing called cable news, she got an interview at CNN. It was for a job as an electronics graphics operator. She did not want to do that anymore, but as luck would have it, a job opened up on the international desk.

One of the questions during her CNN job interviews was: What’s the capital of Iran? Having lived in Iran, she knew it was Tehran.

The rest, as they say, is history. Or at least, as they say of journalism, the first draft of history. At CNN, Amanpour became one of the most prominent foreign correspondents in the media, traveling all over the world, from North Korea to the Balkans. But she never forgot her URI roots; she’s funded a lecture series there, she said, and made trips back to the Ocean State.

The “and Company” part of the name is a nod to the regular contributors — journalists Walter Isaacson, Michel Martin, Alicia Menendez and Hari Sreenivasan — who will be featured on the show. This week’s shows started with interviews of Christine Lagarde, president of the International Monetary Fund, and Kellyanne Conway, counselor to President Donald Trump.

Amanpour also is slated to interview former secretary of state John Kerry, Cardinal Timothy Dolan and author Lisa Brennan Jobs. Contributors’ interviewees will include actress and comedian Tracey Ullman, rapper and producer M.I.A. and former federal prosecutor Preet Bharara.

“For me,” Amanpour said, “Rhode Island remains an incredibly important part of my story.”