Masterfully negotiating war zones and TV network politics, acclaimed journalist Christiane Amanpour ’83 has earned great trust and respect for her award-winning coverage of foreign conflicts—from the Gulf War to the breakup of Yugoslavia.

On October 29, 2018, the CNN anchor and chief international correspondent was inducted into the Broadcasting & Cable Hall of Fame. Mike Malone ’91 attended the event and talked with Amanpour about starting her career in Rhode Island, fake news, #MeToo, and her new show, Amanpour and Company.

Christiane Amanpour was inducted into the Broadcasting & Cable Hall of Fame for her standout 35-year career in television journalism. She was honored alongside CBS Morning News anchor Gayle King, NBCUniversal advertising chief Linda Yaccarino, and Charlie Collier, then-president and general manager at AMC/SundanceTV, among others. She thanked her son, Darius, for making her “a better person, a better journalist, and a better public servant.”

Addressing the ballroom, Amanpour pushed for action regarding the murder of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi. Later in her speech, she quoted F. Scott Fitzgerald, who said, “The test of a firstrate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.”

Amanpour spent her childhood in both Iran and England and aspired to become an ER doctor. But, as she watched the Islamic Revolution unfold in the late 1970s, she decided she wanted to be a journalist instead. Being an ER doctor and a war correspondent are “practically two sides of the same coin,” she says. Both deal in trauma, and both push their practitioners to find the resolve to do their jobs amid exorbitant human misery.

With her new career goals in mind, Amanpour took the SATs and applied to the University of Rhode Island. “I had friends and family who helped me navigate the very complex route from being abroad to getting into a U.S. university,” she says. “I was very pleased to end up there.”

Studying journalism in Kingston, she landed an internship at WJAR in Providence—which she calls “a brilliant news town”—and was mentored by Jim Taricani, who headed the investigative department at the station. “He’s always been incredibly helpful and encouraging,” says Amanpour, who calls Rhode Island her “home state.”

After she graduated in 1983, Amanpour moved on to CNN in Atlanta, Georgia. She started in an entry-level position but moved up quickly to bureau positions in New York and Frankfurt, Germany. After Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990, she went to the Middle East and promptly established herself as a savvy, steely war reporter willing to go toe-to-toe with world leaders.

September 2018 marked the 35th anniversary of Amanpour’s start at CNN. “It’s been my training ground, my home,” she says, singling out founder Ted Turner for his commitment to 24/7 TV news.

URI is also visibly represented on the national level at CNN, where award-winning journalist John King ’85 is chief national correspondent. Amanpour says she first met King when he was an Associated Press reporter during the Gulf War. “That’s when we first became friends,” she says.

Amanpour’s latest project is Amanpour and Company, a news and public affairs program that premiered on PBS in September 2018. She still hosts the nightly global affairs interview show, Amanpour, on CNN, and says she plans to keep plugging away in news, giving a voice to those who may not have one. “I’m just happy that I’m a woman of a certain age, in this day and age, who can keep on keeping on,” she says. “I think that’s a triumph.”

Mike Malone is a 1991 graduate of URI and an editor and reporter at the television trade magazine Broadcasting & Cable.