Iranian Influential Women: Christiane Amanpour (1958-Present)

Christiane Amanpour is undoubtedly one of the most prominent journalists in the world. Her reputation and professional mastery has inspired many female journalists, not only in Britain and the United States, but also in Iran. She is also famed for her courage in reporting. In her numerous interviews with political figures and world leaders, she has never been intimidated by the power and the position of the interviewees.

Christiane Maria Heideh Amanpour was born in London on January 12, 1958, to a British mother and an Iranian father, Mohammad Taghi Amanpour, an executive with Iran Air at the time. She spent the first 11 years of her life in Tehran. Then her parents sent her to a boarding school in England. She attended the Convent of the Holy Cross, a girls’ preparatory school in Buckinghamshire, and then, at the age of 16, she attended New Hall School, a Roman Catholic school in Chelmsford, Essex.

Her mother, Anne Patricia Hill, was a Catholic and Christiane was baptized when she reached puberty.

After finishing high school, Amanpour returned to Tehran but, soon after the 1979 revolution and the outbreak of the Iran-Iraq war, the family went back to England and did not return to Iran. She now had to decide what she wanted to do with her life. After being accepted by the University of Rhode Island, she moved to the United States to study journalism.

While at the university, Amanpour got her first hands-on experience with journalism. She worked for the news department of a radio station in Providence, the state capital of Rhode Island, and for an affiliate of NBC in the same town as a graphics designer.

She graduated with honors in 1983 and decided to join a more prestigious network. But this proved not to be easy. At the time, her un-American name and accent worked against her and the networks she applied to did not grant her an opportunity to work for them.

However, Amanpour was determined and persistent. Finally, she was hired by CNN, a new entity in 1983, and joined its foreign desk in Atlanta, Georgia. She says that, in her early days with CNN, she had to make coffee for her bosses and it took them a while to take her seriously.

Her persistence finally paid off. She was given her first major assignment covering the Iran-Iraq war and then, in 1986, she became CNN's correspondent in Eastern Europe. In 1989, she was assigned to work in Frankfurt, West Germany, at a time when the Berlin wall fell, the Soviet empire disintegrated and democratic revolutions swept across Eastern Europe. Amanpour’s reporting on fast-moving developments and upheavals across the region impressed both the viewers and CNN executives.

Afterward, Amanpour met many other challenges and covered many wars and historical events, even if it meant putting her own life at risk. She did not wear make-up, kept her hair short and simple and wore simple clothes.

Her insight into Middle Eastern affairs put her in a vantage point when Saddam Hussein’s Iraq occupied Kuwait in 1990 and triggered the first Persian Gulf War. Her reports attracted wide notice both among the public and at CNN. She then reported from the Bosnian war that started in 1992 and other conflict zones in person. While in Bosnia-Herzegovina, she interviewed Serb General Ratko Mladic, who would later be convicted of genocide.

She was in Sarajevo during its siege by Serb forces, reporting on military operations and describing the sufferings of the Muslim population of the city. Accused of bias in favor of Bosnian Muslims, she said:  "There are some situations one simply cannot be neutral about, because when you are neutral you are an accomplice. Objectivity doesn't mean treating all sides equally. It means giving each side a hearing."

In appreciation of her reporting during the Siege of Sarajevo, Amanpour was made an honorary citizen of the city in 2006.

By this time, Amanpour was an exceptionally popular journalist. The only time when her personal life became a subject of controversy was in 1998, when she married James Rubin, spokesman for the US State Department during the administration of President Bill Clinton. Democrats and their supporters welcomed her marriage while Clinton opponents claimed it would prevent her from remaining an unbiased, professional journalist. Amanpour and Rubin announced they were divorcing in July 2018.

Two years after her marriage, Amanpour gave birth to a son named Dariush. Her private life had become a subject of interest to the public. She receives one of the highest salaries among journalists and it is enough for her name to be on any report to make it a must-see program for many.

Amanpour has reported from the world’s major hotspots and has interviewed numerous top world leaders at critical points in time, including French President Jacques Chirac, King Abdullah of Jordan, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, Libyan President Muammar Ghaddafi, as well as Iranian Presidents Mohammad Khatami, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Hassan Rouhani.

What makes these interviews stand out is Amanpour’s no-holds-barred approach that has been an inspiration to journalists across the world. She is never intimidated by the position or popularity of her interviewees and does not allow her own beliefs to intrude in the interviews. However, she remains faithful to truth and moral values. In September 2022, when nationwide protests erupted in Iran, Amanpour put an end to a scheduled TV interview with the Islamic Republic’s President Ebrahim Raisi in New York after he demanded that she wear a headscarf.

Amanpour has received all major broadcast awards, including an inaugural Television Academy Award, nine News and Documentary Emmys, four George Foster Peabody Awards, two George Polk Awards, three DuPont-Columbia Awards, the Courage in Journalism Award, an Edward R. Murrow Award and nine honorary degrees. She is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, and a commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British empire. In 2023, she received an Hillary Rodham Clinton Award for “her trailblazing reporting and uplifting of women’s voices and stories from Afghanistan to Iran.”

In her personal life, Amanpour is a fighter as well. In May 2021, she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. Ten days later she had major surgery followed by 18 weeks of chemotherapy. Now that she is in remission, she is sharing her experience with the disease to spread awareness about early detection.

Amanpour did not allow this difficult experience to end her brilliant career in journalism. Six months after her chemotherapy was completed, she spent two weeks in Ukraine to report on the Russian invasion.