Christiane Amanpour - Seeking Truth

Full transcript: Christiane Amanpour on London Real

5:07 Brian Rose: This is London Real. I am Brian Rose. My guest today is Christiane Amanpour, the chief international correspondent for CNN, one of the world’s most respected figures in journalism and anchor of the nightly global affairs program, Amanpour. You’ve reported on some of the worst atrocities in Bosnia, Somalia, Rwanda, Iraq, and Afghanistan, as well as environmental disasters in Haiti, the Japanese tsunami, and Hurricane Katrina. You’ve interviewed some of the world’s most powerful leaders from Tony Blair to Jacques Chirac and Yasser Arafat, and having recently sat down for the first time with French President Emmanuel Macron.

5:39 You’ve won countless awards, including 11 Emmys, and Forbes recently named you as one of the world’s 100 most powerful women. Your slogan is, Be Truthful, Not Neutral. Christiane, welcome to London Real.

5:49 Christiane Amanpour: Thank you. Very good to be with you, Brian.

5:51 Brian Rose: There’s quite a bio there.

5:52 Christiane Amanpour: There’s quite a bio. Not a hard work. Yeah. And fun too.

5:55 Brian Rose: You moved back to London about four years ago. I was wondering, why move back, and has it changed a lot since you were born here and hung out here?

6:04 Christiane Amanpour: You know, my life has been one of moving all over the place all the time. I was born here in 1958, but my parents were living in Iran. My father was Iranian, so my mom came to England to have me because of the better health, better neonatal, all of that kind of stuff.

6:20 This was a long time ago. And then I was taken back immediately after I was a few weeks old, and I grew up in Iran until I went to boarding school for a while here in England. I did my university in America. I got my first job at CNN in America, in Atlanta. But after that, you know, I spent 17 years as a foreign correspondent.

6:41 And so I’ve lived most of my life around the world, but I did spend a few years between 2008 and 2013 back in the U.S. I like it everywhere. Everywhere is different. I did different things in different places. In the U.S., in this last time I was living there, that’s when I transitioned from being a little bit less in the field to being slightly more in the studio, and mostly around my son, because he at that time was about seven or eight years old.

7:12 And paradoxically, you know, they kind of almost need you more as they grow up more. And that was a very important time between, you know, when he was seven and 13, to be at home. And I was able, luckily, thanks to CNN, to transition while I was in New York into the anchor chair. And what I tried to do was bring the field into the studio. So I didn’t just want to do talking heads.

7:36 I still wanted to interview people as I did in the field, whether they were eyewitnesses to something that happened, whether they were ordinary people, or whether they were elected leaders or dictators or whatever. And I used a lot of video and reports from the field, bring them into the studio with a huge screen. And I drew a lot on my own archives as well, from being in the field as a sort of historical point-counterpoint. So that’s what I was trying to do with my show in the studio.

8:02 You know, I grew up kind of in the 80s, and I probably had a bit of a crush on you watching you on CNN, but you were always in the field. And that was the, I was always this stunning contrast. There’s Christiane, she’s on the field, and there’s places where, you know, most people don’t want to go, and yet you’re there telling us what’s happening. Was that always a decision that you wanted to go there, or is it something that CNN suggested to you?

8:24 Christiane Amanpour: No, I wanted to go there.

8:25 Brian Rose: Yeah, I got that feeling.

8:26 Christiane Amanpour: In fact, right now, CNN’s slogan is, go there. I was going there way before it was a slogan. But I was in the tradition of the classic foreign correspondent. When I went to university in the States, I went to the University of Rhode Island, and I went there because I wanted to eventually be a foreign correspondent.

8:43 And that came from my experience in Iran during the Iranian Revolution of 78-79. And I realized that here was this amazing, you know, geostrategic event that was causing ripples, and you know, much more than ripples all over the world. And I was old enough to understand what was going on, even though it was happening to me and my family and my country, and you know, connected enough to it, but detached enough to say, this is what I want to do growing up.

9:12 I want to tell these kinds of stories. And that is what led me to university and then led me to get my first jobs. And very fortunately, after I graduated, which was in 83, 82-83, CNN was a startup at that point. So I got a job at CNN right at the bottom, really. I mean, you couldn’t get lower than I did.

9:32 I was like a desk assistant and lower. I literally bought coffee. And I worked my way up from there. Knowing what I want to do, I had a very clear vision of wanting to go into the field. You know, the heroes at that time were people like Peter Jennings, and then obviously all the people who I used to read about, who were the Vietnam generation, you know, Neil Sheehan, Peter Arnett, who also was at CNN, David Halberstam, who I’d read about at university, the best and the brightest.

9:59 You know, those were our texts that we were reading about. People like Gloria Emerson, who had been one of the first women foreign correspondents, Marguerite Higgins, you know, all these people who just inspired me to want to go and do this kind of stuff, you know, the trench coat and the expense account and flying around the world on somebody else’s dime. I mean, what could be better? And I just loved it and I thrived on it. And it was only, you know, sort of a few years in, not really even a few years, almost immediately actually, as actually being a foreign correspondent, that I realized how significant a role it was in society, how important it was to tell stories.

10:39 The history of our civilization for thousands of years has been storytelling. So I feel like I’m continuing a tradition that explains the world to people. And I think people are getting away from that too much, particularly on television. Right now it’s panels, it’s talking heads, it’s, you know, not even major leaders who you can hold accountable. So that’s why for me, just recently interviewing Emmanuel Macron, the Iranian president, Rouhani, was very important.

11:07 And I always try to get their first interviews, and I often succeed, which is great, because when people talk to you first, when they’ve just been elected, there’s a level of truth and frankness that maybe sometimes gets eroded or buffered away over time.

11:21 Brian Rose: How do you prepare to speak with a leader like that? I mean, you just showed something there. When they’re new, you can probably get them to say things, or they have this, they’re not as maybe jaded or fixed.

11:33 But how do you prepare for something like that? Obviously they know who you are, but how do you prepare?

11:39 Christiane Amanpour: Well, just to say, they’re not jaded, and they also are not embarrassed to talk about their vision. They’re not yet so cynical. And many leaders who are elected, usually in the democratic world, sometimes even the non-democratic world, they believe they can change things for the better.

11:55 And it’s great to be able to get them at that moment, when they haven’t tried and failed, or tried and faced incredible obstacles, or tried and found that they have to sort of triage and be expedient rather than excellent and all the rest of it. So it’s great to talk to people at that point, because I admire leaders who are courageous and who have a vision and who have the guts to actually enact their vision despite what will come against them. So how do I prepare?

12:25 I guess the normal way that people prepare, I talk to as many people who know them, I read as much as I can, I watch as much as I can, and often I’ve been around them but on the periphery. So, for instance, with Macron, before he was president, he came to London to talk to the French expatriates whose vote he wanted, and he had a little sort of background meeting with some press. It wasn’t on-camp. And so I was able, without knowing that I was going to put that on the air, to sit and observe him, not knowing that he was going to win, but to sit and observe.

12:59 So I had the notes from then. So I was able to come back with some of those notes. I still have those notes. And I also covered his election. So I was there on May 8th when, you know, the second round, and watched him do that long, solitary walk from under the, you know, colonades at the Louvre all the way to the pyramid, the Glauss Pyramid, and get onto that stage.

13:21 And I find him very impressive. And I know that, you know, with every leader there’s controversy around them, but if he enacts what he says he’s going to enact, it’ll be a game changer for France. And France is a great country that has been mired in a sclerotic, I mean, you know, you were in business before, in a sclerotic labor environment that has, you know, seen off too many people. There’s been a brain drain from France. And it’s a beautiful, beautiful country with such a history and such a culture and such a role to play in the world, and particularly as one of the French, one of his ministers, has said, you know, with President Macron, we are entering a new phase while Britain is leaving history with Brexit.

14:06 Brian Rose: Okay, yeah, yeah. And when it comes to world leaders, I mean, you’ve sat down with so many different kinds, including, you know, people like Milosevic and other people. Do you judge them and do you end up liking politicians?

14:20 Christiane Amanpour: Not Milosevic. I loathed him with a passion that even surprised myself, because Milosevic was the man who brought us ethnic cleansing and genocide in Europe, you know, for the first time after the Nazis in World War II.

14:34 And that’s what I mean when I say very soon after becoming a foreign correspondent, I was thrust into a situation where I had to make moral, factual, journalistic judgments, you know, how I was going to tell this story of the Bosnia War, for instance. And I received some criticism from people because people said, oh, she’s taking sides, oh, this and that. And I had to think about it very, very deeply at what was I doing. You know, people criticized me for, quote, unquote, you know, losing my objectivity.

15:11 So I had to reexamine what objectivity meant. And I was worried because I thought, crikey, maybe I’ve gone native. I don’t know. Have I done the wrong thing? I’m a young foreign correspondent.

15:19 Have I, you know, have I been, you know, led along a garden path that’s unjournalistic and too advocacy? And I came to the conclusion that no, I hadn’t been. And what I was doing was right because I was actually reporting the truth. And while Milosevic and the Serbs, the Bosnian Serbs, didn’t want the truth, obviously. And while the, you know, the players had their own version of the truth, and while the rest of the world, whether it was President Clinton or Bush before him, Maggie Thatcher or whoever came after her, the French president, Mitterrand, et cetera, they didn’t want to intervene to do the right thing in Bosnia.

15:56 So they used all sorts of language that was morally equivocating. And they tried to lump all sides into a factual basket, the same factual basket. And I realized, well, actually, no. I mean, I’m here in Sarajevo, and we’ve got the enemy of the people in Sarajevo sitting on the hills with the superior forces, the superior firepower, and kind of the world on their side. And they’re shooting at us, and they’re shooting at children, and they’re shooting at women, and they’re, you know, sending mortars and heavy weapons fire into this little city in a valley that, by the way, once hosted the Olympics not so long ago.

16:39 And moreover, Bosnia was a real multi-ethnic fabric of religions, of ethnicities, of, you know, of politics and society.

16:47 Brian Rose: You could relate to, because you grew up in a multi-legend household.

16:52 Christiane Amanpour: I could relate to. Yeah, but which we were brought up to respect.

16:56 Brian Rose: You were brought up to respect.

16:58 That’s the basis of Western democracy, right?

17:01 Christiane Amanpour: Yeah. And there we were having to make a judgment. Were we going to report in a way that defended the values and morals that we were brought up to believe were the true ones and that our governments were seeking to spread around the world, which was right, I thought. But here, when it was at stake, they were doing nothing about it.

17:21 Now, all of this wasn’t going through my mind. All I knew was that I was reporting the truth of what was going on. And it was afterwards that I realized that actually objectivity means reporting the truth. It means getting everybody’s truth and reporting it, but never creating a false moral equivalence, never saying all sides are equal, because that’s not the truth. That’s false.

17:42 That’s a cop-out. It’s a lie. So I’m very comfortable where I ended up. And that’s where that slogan came from, truthful, not new, comfortable. Absolutely.

17:50 And I reintroduced it to myself in the post-Trump era because of the fake news, because of all of this kind of stuff, because people confuse neutrality with truth. And many journalists don’t understand that they need to know what they are reporting on, whether it’s in the field. Is this ethnic cleansing and a genocide, or is it just a natural disaster? You need to know that before you can actually report on it. Is what’s happening in politics today just natural politics, or is it a distortion and a partisanship that seeks to distort and divert from the truth?

18:28 You know, when we see that, we have to bring people back into the center. And that’s our job, and often we can be very unpopular for doing our job. But if our job is the truth, then we have to be gutsy enough to stand up for the truth and report on the truth no matter how uncomfortable it is for us, and no matter how leaders seek to delegitimize us. And when it happens in the United States, which boastfully and rightfully considers itself the teacher of all things of the First Amendment, freedoms, all of those things, well, then we have to defend it even more.

19:11 Brian Rose: Do you think it takes a strong personality like yourself to be able to grab that journalistic integrity and say, okay, this is me, this is my track record, and I’m going to go and not just report the news, I’m going to go and effectively putting your opinion on it. It’s like I am going to analyze this through all my intelligence.

19:31 Christiane Amanpour: No, I actually disagree with that. It’s not my opinion, and when you see me on my nightly show, it’s not really my opinion. It’s experience from decades in the field.

19:41 So I bring my experience to the table. So if somebody tries to tell me, I’m going to say, well, actually, no, that’s not true.

19:47 Brian Rose: So you’re pulling out the truth, not your opinion.

19:49 Christiane Amanpour: Correct.

19:50 Brian Rose: It’s what you see as the truth.

19:51 Christiane Amanpour: Correct.

19:52 Brian Rose: And it’s easy to be misled by truth.

19:54 Christiane Amanpour: Well, some people, yes, it’s easy to be misled, and some people think that if you’re telling the truth, you’re doing your own opinion. But because we’ve been dragged into partisan corners in America and increasingly around the world, in post-Brexit Britain, in Arab Spring Muslim countries, journalists have been pulled into partisan corners so that if you don’t report this side’s politics or that side’s politics, you are the enemy of the people.

20:23 And we have to get back to being the truth-seekers who drive a truck through the left and the right. And that takes knowledge. It takes experience. It takes courage. And it takes purpose.

20:41 It takes taking your profession seriously.

20:43 Brian Rose: I was watching All the President’s Men the other night and just watching Woodward and Bernstein and all the work they did and the legwork, and I’m hearing about it now, and I think there was an interview with Leslie Stahl, and she said at the time, this was the story that everyone said was ridiculous and it was going to go away, and that someone told her, I guess it was at some of the new deepthroat at the time, keep watching the story. It took a year of journalism, and then I see today, I see internet news, I see reporters, and I just wonder, are we still training journalists, young journalists, to do that work now, or is that going to be lost in the internet age?

21:22 Christiane Amanpour: Well, I tell you what, I judge an award, I’m on a panel of judges, that’s called the Livingstone Award in the United States, and it’s for American journalists who work for American organizations, national, local, and international, so they cover all those aspects, and I can tell you, these are all journalists 35 and younger, there is brilliant journalism coming out of the United States, young journalists, incredibly good at doing a real job of journalism, and that really, really, really invigorates me because it’s true in the social media sphere, there’s all these people masquerading as journalists, and who are not journalists, but seeking to put their opinions, and that’s where it’s opinion. Of course, we get fact, and we get breaking news, and this and that on social media, but the majority of it is just these weird conversations that go on in this sort of circular logic and tunnel vision, and so, I’m very happy to know that brilliant journalism is coming out of the regions all over the United States, and I think that the problem is that companies are cutting back, and so not investing enough into that kind of journalism, so, oh, Trump won, oh, we’re all surprised, well, no, not the journalists who actually live and breathe and work in that area, they know, oh, Brexit happened, oh my gosh, we’re all, you know, surprised, well, not if we’d been investing, you know, enough people, money, and legwork in all those areas that are vital on these vital issues,

22:57 So, I’m not disappointed or depressed or, you know, hanging my head in despair, but I do think more care and investment and nurturing of that kind of journalism needs to go on, and because I do think that real journalism is in a death fight with fake journalism, and we have to invest and arm up if we’re going to win, and we have to win, because the difference between truth and lies is the difference between democracy and dictatorship, so we have to win, it’s existential, and I tell you what, I am very, very nervous right now, because, you know, we have a journalistic body that treats, you know, the NFL crisis that we’re undergoing right now with the North Korean nuclear war crisis that we’re, you know, skirting along right now, you know, we have to understand, you know, where the existential crises are.

23:58 Are we going to win that fight? I don’t know. Does the public understand how important that journalism is? I hope they do, I like to think they do, but I genuinely believe that the public, the public, you, me, our friends, our families, everybody, needs to take more ownership of where they get their news and where they find their truth. They can’t just go online and YouTube or Google or Tweet or whatever and think that that’s it.

24:29 They have to be much more, you know, have a much bigger smorgasbord of menu in front of them, and they have to be responsible for seeking, we know that there are brand names that are synonymous with truth, and people need to be able to have a baseline. Then get all the other information you want from elsewhere, but they need to have a baseline of actual professional journalism that they seek, because otherwise everybody’s, you know, everybody’s all over the place. Oh, did you know that happened?

25:00 Well, actually, no, it didn’t. Oh, but I saw it on social media. Well, still, sorry, it wasn’t true. It didn’t happen. Do our own due diligence.

25:06 Brian Rose: I think so. I think people have to do their own due diligence, and you can see, you know now that most people get their news from Facebook, you know, news bits come from Facebook. Well, there are many, many problems with that, including the fact that the CEO of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, not many months ago, said that people had to be crazy if they thought that either the Russians were planting stuff or that, you know, Facebook was affecting the elections or whatever it might be.

25:31 Well, sure enough, now they’ve been given the evidence, and now they’re trying to, you know, insert some kind of mechanisms to weed this out. You’ve seen the stories that President Obama took Mark Zuckerberg aside months ago and warned him about what was going on and what they were finding through their intelligence, and apparently, you know, Facebook didn’t take that as seriously as they should have done then.

25:55 Christiane Amanpour: Well, these are really critical moments. Facebook is not just a money-making operation anymore.

26:00 It seeks a global community. Listen to Mark Zuckerberg. If he wants to be emperor of a global community, a Facebook community, he needs to make sure that it’s whole and true and safe, and that it’s not being used for very, very nefarious reasons by bad actors.

26:16 Brian Rose: Right, and most journalists probably, New York Times is probably not happy with Facebook because it’s changed their business model and altered things, and again, they’re not taking that responsibility for ultimately reporting news.

26:30 Christiane Amanpour: Yeah, I think, to me, there’s two different issues here. One is the economic model that obviously online has changed, and the other is basic truth, basic truth and credibility. I mean, fortunately, one of the good news stories, I think, in the last year or so since the political upheaval in the United States is that CNN, all the other networks, which have really solid brand names, you mentioned the New York Times, the Washington Post, we’ve seen a massive surge of viewers, readers, online users.

27:04 So people do want to get their truth from somewhere.

27:07 Brian Rose: Right, they’re looking for the right price.

27:10 Christiane Amanpour: And people are very much activated and mobilized by this political upheaval.

27:14 Brian Rose: Yeah, my mother visited me recently from California to see her new grandson, and when I mentioned the president, she just has this strange look on her face, and when I push her further, and I don’t live in America now, it just feels like it is a very divisive time. You know, who did you vote for, who did you vote for?

27:32 And I could see this pain on her face, and also this sense of embarrassment as well, and I was just wondering where you think we are now, and you read kind of, you know, almost one year later, what is the state of the union now and the divisiveness with Trump, and where are we going from here?

27:50 Christiane Amanpour: Well, it’s obvious. It’s very divisive, and it’s getting more and more divisive, but if you read a new book that’s come out, and I just heard the two authors talking about it, and I think it should be must-reading, it’s called, I believe it’s called One Nation After Trump, and it’s been written by E.J. Dionne, who is a columnist at the Washington Post, plus Norman Ornstein, who is a more conservative thinker who works at the Heritage Foundation, and I think there’s a third author, but they trace back the origins of political partisanship in the United States, and actually it goes back to the late 70s in our modern era, and Newt Gingrich and the revolution within the Republican Party, and then how that all plays out between both parties and how, you know, less and less working across the aisle, less and less policy happening, more and more politics, and then couple that with the rise of partisan news organizations, whether it’s MSNBC on one side, MSNBC on one side, Fox News on the other side, all the radio, you know, that whole sphere.

28:53 All of this has created partisanship in a very profound and game-changing way. And they talk about how some of what’s going on, whether it’s in the Supreme Court and how justices are chosen and confirmed, et cetera, or in other parts of our civil society, how that is compromising democracy even in the United States today, which is why when you go across now to Europe and you see that Brexit was the first of these, then you had the election of 2016 in the United States, then you thought perhaps that Marine Le Pen, the far-right national front leader, might have won in France. That’s why Emmanuel Macron’s election is so significant.

29:38 And before, because he came to the center with an unabashedly pro-EU, pro-globalization, pro-centrist view, and that’s what he ran on. He didn’t seek to copy. He sought to convince, which is actually, I’m quoting the German defense minister now, we’re not going to be copycats, we’re going to seek to convince. And that’s what leaders have to do if they believe in a center. Because otherwise it’s really easy to win on the fringes and on the extremes.

30:11 You just pander to fear and you use lies and all the rest of it. It’s very easy, left or right. The extremes on both are doing that. And I think, again, it’s our duty as human beings, as voters, as whatever, to really know where we’re putting our vote and what the story is. I mean, Brexit, there were so many lies, you know, and in any election campaign, anywhere.

30:42 And so I think you just have to be really careful. Otherwise you get left with no £350 million a week to the national health.

30:49 Brian Rose: Right. I mean, you’ve seen so many different cycles of elections and politics. I mean, now when we have a sitting president that’s firing at people on Twitter and saying fake news and calling organizations out like CNN, etc., what do you make of this? Is there any perspective here?

31:04 Christiane Amanpour: Yes, there is perspective and it troubles me very, very deeply because words matter. And words, again, I’m quoting somebody else, words create worlds. That is the truth. And when somebody like Donald Trump criticizes my network or others and is completely wrong, I mean, we are not fake news. We are the opposite of fake news.

31:25 So fake news obviously comes in two flavours. There’s the fake news that’s made out of lies, whole cloth. That goes elsewhere. And then there’s fake news that politicians call fake news for stuff I don’t like what you’re saying about me. Marginalize it.

31:41 No, no, no. Yeah. It’s just like code for I don’t like what you’re saying. And this has a long tradition. It’s called propaganda.

31:48 And the Russians are my past masters at it or the Soviets. And it’s just, you know, in memoriam, it’s been going on for a long, long time. And we again have to recognize it, stare it down, report the truth and not be afraid to stare it down and to swat those accusations, which are fake and false accusations aside and to keep doing our job because if not, you know, then everything just, you know, gets muddied up.

32:17 Brian Rose: How will you deal with the White House in the next three years?

32:21 And do you think you’ll ever sit down with Trump? And would that make a difference?

32:25 Christiane Amanpour: Well, listen, I’m certainly trying. I’ve never, I’ve actually never interviewed a sitting president. I don’t belong to the Washington Press Corps.

32:31 I’m a foreign correspondent, but I believe that, you know, the president of the United States is also, has traditionally been the leader of the world purely because America is the most powerful country in the world. In every respect, it’s still the only superpower. It is now the only superpower since the Soviet Union collapsed. So, yes, of course, I would like to sit with Donald Trump. I would have liked to have sat with Barack Obama and asked him why he didn’t intervene in Syria and stop the crisis that has brought us blowback from ISIS and, you know, all that stuff.

33:03 That is a direct result of allowing the Syrian war to continue unabated. And so there are many, many questions that we have to ask, you know.

33:13 Brian Rose: And so the next three years will be business as usual?

33:17 Christiane Amanpour: No, it’s not business as usual because we are being assaulted. So we have to create, you know, a counter-offensive based on truth.

33:26 It’s definitely not business as usual right now. It is a, you know, you asked, did it have consequences and a ripple effect? Well, it does. Every Tom Dick and Harry, you know, dictator or authoritarian leader right now is bludgeoning all of us with this weapon of false news, fake news. And not just us, but their own reporters, their own journalists.

33:48 There are more and more journalists being put into jail, more and more journalists being wounded and killed around the world. And more and more, you know, as I say, authoritarian strongmen leaders who are marginalizing their journalists, you know, taking cover from the most powerful country in the world. The president of the most powerful country in the world, of the most evolved democracy in the world. If he can say fake news, well then, you know, certainly President Erdogan in Turkey can, certainly President Duterte in the Philippines can, certainly, you know, people all over the world.

34:22 And it’s going on right now. And so it’s very scary, very, very, very scary for us.

34:27 Brian Rose: Is it something that keeps you up at night? I mean, you know.

34:31 Christiane Amanpour: Yeah, it does. When people say, when people, you know, for instance, you know, people ask, I don’t know, whoever, you know, they do their lightning rounds.

34:40 And I read, you know, one young rising actress was asked, what do you think the biggest challenge is today? And she honestly said, who to believe, you know. I mean, that’s really difficult to hear. And it’s very dangerous for our world. You know, as you know, the Oxford English Dictionaries word for the end of 2016 was post-truth.

35:04 You know, I don’t want to live in a post-truth world. Therefore, I have to fight to make sure we live in a world that recognizes where the truth is.

35:12 Brian Rose: You know, North Korea, your thoughts on this situation, it seems to be changing every day. You’ve obviously watched, you know, what’s going on there the last 30, 40 years. You know, the history. What do you see as things we need to really focus on?

35:24 Christiane Amanpour: Well, there’s many levels to this. First and foremost, I have never, ever seen a slanging match, a verbal rhetoric going between the leader of the United States and the leader of a hermit kingdom. In other words, isolated in his own kingdom, not really open to the rest of the world, not really maybe used to a Twitter president, not really understanding the nuance of what happens in the public square. With nuclear weapons and ICBMs, which he’s already threatened the world with.

35:59 So right now, I’m afraid that this kind of verbal volleying of warfare that’s going between these two countries could lead that leader or anybody else into a miscalculation and a blunder that would spell a horrendous disaster. You know, I don’t want to see a nuclear weapon fired in anger or by mistake, or in a misjudgment of whether he’s under attack or not. So I’m very, very worried about that. I’ve never seen this ever in my life. And it goes against everything people have advised, you know, the US not to do.

36:36 Do not go this person. Do not shove him into a corner. Do not allow him to miscalculate and misread you. So I’m very, very worried about that. And I’ve spoken to many, you know, people who’ve actually got much more experience with the North Korean leadership than I have, who’ve said precisely the same thing, that they’re not a suicidal regime, but you don’t want them to misunderstand your geostrategic position vis-à-vis their country.

37:01 And then I would say that, you know, North Korea has, as I’ve said, nuclear weapons and it’s developing ICBMs in order to deliver those nuclear weapons. That’s different than Iran. Iran never had any kind of weapons or warheads or anything. And the West, under President Obama, which was really, really significant, and the rest of the world with China and Russia, entered, as you know, several years of intense negotiations, which resulted in a very grown-up deal, the Iran nuclear deal, which ring-fenced the biggest, most worrying part of what people thought Iran might one day do. Very important.

37:46 So I obviously think that it would be reckless to ditch that, particularly while we’re in a situation with another guy, another leader, who we’ve never spent that much diplomatic and political energy on. We have never tried to really ring-fence them in a serious way. A couple of times it happened. President Clinton did it. Finally President George W. Bush did it.

38:10 But it sort of was allowed to sort of fall off the reservation and not enough effort was paid to it. So you don’t want to be ditching the Iran deal while you’re trying to figure out how to deal with North Korea. And I think right now, as we understand, President Obama told President Trump that the most important, dangerous challenge for him would be North Korea. We really do need to focus very heavily on that, and it can’t just be a war of words, which may boil over into something worse.

38:40 And you know, President Bush, George W. Bush told President Obama that Iran would be the most important thing for him to deal with, and Obama did. Now, right-wingers in the United States and in Israel and the rest of it don’t like it, but it actually is the best. It’s not perfect, but in these situations you cannot have perfect be the enemy of the good. And it secures for a period of time, a significant period of time, and Iran is in full compliance according to all the organizations that have to judge whether it’s in full compliance or not.

39:14 So you want to transpose something similar to North Korea. It’s over. You cannot denuclearize North Korea in the foreseeable future. The only thing you can do is try to get some kind of containment, some kind of Soviet-U.S.-style mutually assured destruction, and very, very serious containment of that program.

39:35 Brian Rose: How does that situation ever play out? I mean, is North Korea going to be fundamentally different in 30 years than it is now?

39:43 Christiane Amanpour: Yes.

39:43 Brian Rose: Because of information? The Internet?

39:46 Christiane Amanpour: Yes, yes.

39:47 Brian Rose: It can’t survive?

39:48 Christiane Amanpour: It has survived, and it will survive, but it’ll change. Bits and bobs will change. You know, people ask in 1979, will Iran be the same as it was at the height of the revolution? No, it’s changed. People want something different.

40:00 The only reason the Iran nuclear deal was signed is because of who was elected in Iran, not because of Obama and all the others. They did the right thing in terms of diplomacy, but Iran responded because of Hassan Rouhani, who was a reformer, and who answered his voters, who said, we want you to decrease tensions. We want a better relationship with the rest of the world. We want our economy back, and the only way to do that was to get rid of the global sanctions.

40:32 And the only way to do that was to play ball in a deal on the nuclear program.

40:37 Brian Rose: You grew up in Iran, and I still remember when W. Bush threw out the Axis of Evil comment in his address. What should we know about that country and the people? Because you know more than I do, and my mother actually went and visited there, and I know friends that have gone there, and they have wonderful things to say.

40:56 And yet on the outside, it always seems like the politicians are fighting, but the people aren’t at war with each other.

41:03 Christiane Amanpour: Well, I think your mother is probably your best eyewitness to what Iran is like. I can tell you, but I’m already half Iranian, I’ve been a reporter, so I can tell you in that sort of way. But your mom probably told you that she had a great experience because the people are massively friendly, incredibly educated. It’s a very young population.

41:22 They are the most pro-Western of all that region. Of all the people who live in American allies, the Iranians, which is an adversary, they are more pro-American than anybody in Saudi Arabia, in the Gulf, and all those countries. And obviously it has a great culture. I mean Iran, Persia, has a culture that goes back 2,500 years, all the way back to Cyrus the Great and Alexander, who burnt part of Persepolis down, and Darius. And if you, you know, Cyrus the Great created the world’s first human rights receptacle. It’s actually a cylinder on which sort of hieroglyphics have been written, and it’s doing a tour of America and the rest of the West.

42:10 And it has been doing for a long time. It’s gone to museums all over America and around. And they created. That’s where the first attempt at human rights was enshrined. Which is remarkable when you think about global human rights. And then of course you know the ancient kings liberated Jerusalem from the Babylonians and allowed the Jews to go back and rebuild the temple and all the rest of it.

42:35 So there’s a real important role that Persia has played in harmony in that area, in tolerance, in allowing, you know, different religious freedoms and in human rights. Of course fast forward to, you know, the last part of the 20th century and now the Islamic Revolution in Iran changed the dynamic because it entered for the first time political Islam into the political and policy sphere in the world. So it’s been a force to reckon with on that field as well, which is why it’s so important to see young Iranians want what we all want. A decent economy, human rights, you know, the ability to live in peace with the rest of the world.

43:22 They want nothing to do with fundamentalism and terrorism and nuclear weapons and all the rest of it. And that’s what they told their president. And that’s what empowered him to enter those negotiations because he was obviously going to run for reelection and he was reelected in this year 2013. Had it been bad old Ahmadinejad, everybody remembers his name, right? Never would have happened. No deal possible.

43:45 Brian Rose: Okay, so we are seeing progress is what you’re telling me.

43:49 Christiane Amanpour: Yes, but so we have to be careful not to torpedo that progress. But I am currently I sit here and if I’m asked, I’m going to say I’m really worried about North Korea getting out of hand. And I tell you what, I grew up, you grew up in the nuclear generation. Yeah, that’s that was scary. Today, today, young people, since the fall of the Soviet Union, have not had to worry about nuclear warfare.

44:16 And therefore, people are slightly desensitized and maybe a little unknowing and maybe a little, you know, well, nuclear war, maybe one little tactical nuclear war. What would that do? I mean, that’s really scary, too. Yeah. So we have to make sure that all our global citizens understand that one weapon fired, even if these guys go and do an atmospheric nuclear test, which is now banned under international treaty.

44:46 The fallout in our in our in our world would be terrible. And any kind of nuclear war would be a complete and utter disaster for all of us.

44:55 Brian Rose: What’s your advice to, you know, young people that might be watching journalists and things? You always had a phrase that you said start at the bottom.

45:04 Christiane Amanpour: Yeah, for sure.

45:05 Brian Rose: And what do you mean by that?

45:07 Brian Rose: Those first 10 years at CNN, what are some of those big moments you’ll remember the scary moments, the moments that you had to think to yourself, do I am I really going to put myself in danger? Do I really want to go here? Is it worth the is it worth the career? Is it worth telling the truth, you know, to get out there in these dangerous places? Yeah.

45:51 Brian Rose: What are the ones you’ll remember or tell your future grandson?

45:55 Christiane Amanpour: Well, I’ll remember everything, you know, from the courage it took to stand up for my rights and my ambitions and my goals. Even while I was still on the desk, I spent, you know, three years in Atlanta at headquarters writing for the anchors, writing, you know, copy and then becoming the producer and finally a correspondent in New York. I love doing that. And I would say the first Gulf War was probably I’ll never forget that because if anybody can cast their mind back to 1990, 91, that was when CNN exploded into the world’s consciousness.

46:30 It was no longer just a new American cable 24 seven network, but it exploded onto the international stage because there you saw, you know, it was broadcast all over the world, really in a significant way at a time when there could have been a world war. And you saw all the Americans and Russians and Iraqis and Kuwaitis and Saudis, everybody negotiating in real time live. I mean, you saw the people coming out and talking about it afterwards. Obviously, they were behind closed doors. You saw the war start with all that, you know, anti-aircraft fire with night vision goggles. Nobody will forget that. And we were there. We were there at the beginning.

47:10 Brian Rose: Did you know CNN was going to be big? Did you know? Was that seven years after it started?

47:15 Christiane Amanpour: No, I didn’t know. In fact, when we all joined CNN, many of us joined out of college without having gone to graduate school because we thought back in 1980, 81, 82, 83, that CNN would be our grad school on the job.

47:28 That we’d then go off and join, you know, the big time. Little did we know that CNN was the big time. We would develop into the big time. So that was really fantastic. And I would say it has been, if you asked me, you know, what was my inspiration or the sort of moral compass, I would say Ted Turner, the person who actually founded CNN, because not only was he a brilliant businessman, but he was so far ahead of the curve.

47:57 He was so far ahead of every wave that that crested, whether it was a communications revolution 24-7, everything that has come since has been a copy of CNN, everything. He changed the world with 24-7. Whether it was then moving into the Goodwill Games, which seemed quite quaint right now, but it was his way of bringing the Soviet Union as it was then in the United States together after the US boycotted the Olympics in Moscow. I know we’re going back very far, but he believed in global peace and cooperation, and he put his money and CNN where his mouth was. And it made a difference. It made a difference.

48:36 CNN is known as the network that believes and that still seeks every side of the story, that is a platform for the world’s stories. And that’s Ted Turner. And then when it was philanthropy in the 90s, he’s the first of the modern day billionaires to give away a billion dollars. Gates, Bloomberg, Buffett, all of those people followed CNN, followed Ted Turner. He did it first, 1996 or seven.

49:07 Then climate. He was way ahead of the curve on the environment and on green technology and business and on saving the world, literally saving the world, the climate. He’s been ahead of the curve on that. He’s America’s biggest private landowner for the single purpose of saving that land from being built or destroyed. He restored bison to the American Southwest.

49:36 He’s phenomenal. He’s literally one of those things would be enough in any lifetime. And he’s done them all.

49:43 Brian Rose: A mentor for you.

49:45 Christiane Amanpour: I think he could have been a global leader. For me and for every business person, for every journalist, for every environmental scientist, for every philanthropist.

49:56 Brian Rose: Do you feel like it’s your job to kind of represent the fabric of CNN?

50:00 Christiane Amanpour: No, I don’t think it’s my job, but if I do, I do.

50:02 Brian Rose: People must come to you inside the company and always look like, what’s Kristian saying about this or thinking or what’s her attitude? Because like, you are an icon.

50:10 Christiane Amanpour: You’d have to ask other people.

50:12 Brian Rose: Okay, so maybe.

50:13 Christiane Amanpour: I’ve been there. I mean, I’m still there. So that’s more than 30 years. Just longevity in itself.

50:21 Brian Rose: Being a woman, being a woman journalist, and then from the 80s, 90s and 2000s, what was it like? And what do you tell women when they ask you about that? And is it not what I might think it would be?

50:32 Christiane Amanpour: I mean, it’s everything you think it would be. It’s very tough to break in as a woman. Whether in politics, look at Hillary Clinton, one of the most experienced and competent candidates for any office, anywhere in the world.

50:44 Still suffered from misogyny as well as all the other stuff. Yes, it is difficult. And I was one of the first and few women in modern sort of war coverage. I mean, the first Gulf War, there were not that many women. Now there are many, many more wherever we look. So in that regard, it’s really changed and it’s really great.

51:06 I would say that all of our bosses need to understand the phenomenon. It’s very simple. Equal pay for equal play. And until we’re paid the same for the same job, then we still have a struggle. And it’s not subjective. It needs to happen. And that is a quantifiable way of equalizing the playing field.

51:29 So that’s what I believe should happen in my profession and every other profession. And I think there just needs to be, you know, just a lot more understanding that more women can mean more competence. More women can mean more peace if it’s in global politics. And we’re not talking about women dominating. We’re just talking about leveling the playing field. We’re talking about equity and parity. It’s really a simple concept. Really, really simple.

51:55 And it’s shocking to me that it’s still considered, you know, revolutionary or a struggle still today after so many years of this. I interviewed just recently at the United Nations Ellen Johnson-Sirlief, who is the first and only female president to be elected in Africa. And after two terms, she’s about to stand down, as the Constitution says she must. And she says she’s doing that, unlike many of the men who are still there into their dotage. Look at, you know, Mugabe and Zimbabwe. Look at the president of Equatorial Guinea. You can look all over the place.

52:30 She’s doing it partly because it’s a constitutional imperative in her country, but also to try and, you know, send a lesson to the rest of Africa. You know, if I can step down, you guys can too. Give people a chance. Let democracy flourish. But she and many other world leaders have said that, you know, the more women you have at the negotiating table, for instance, the more likely you are to have, you know, reduction intentions, more, you know, more serious peace negotiations.

53:03 And I interviewed Michelle Bachelet, who’s the Chilean president. And at one point, there were several female presidents in Latin America. Now, she’s the last one standing. So, yes, I do believe it makes a difference if there are more women at the table, whatever table it is.

53:18 Brian Rose: You recently sat down with Hillary Clinton. What was that like with her? And how was her character and what did you learn and what are the takeaways from that?

53:26 Christiane Amanpour: I did the first interview to be broadcast after the election. It took her several months. It was in May. And we sat on a stage in New York in front of actually a women’s audience. It was an organization called Women for Women International. And I think she was willing and able and she felt comfortable to speak her truth in a way that she hadn’t during the campaign and in a way that seemed maybe stilted.

53:53 And, you know, she’s very guarded. And she was unplugged. And it was really interesting, actually, really interesting to see it. And I’m sure, you know, people are reading her book. It’s sold a lot of copies now. What happened? And I think that she presents a much less guarded version of herself, which I think, you know, perhaps had she presented that on the campaign trail, it might have made a difference.

54:19 But, you know, I was, you know, like many women electrified to see a woman running for that office. And I would have loved to have seen a woman president in the United States. I think it would have been a game changer for the rest of the world. It would have shown the rest of the world. It would have unlocked some kind of a key because, again, America is such an important country. And often what America does, people around the world follow.

54:41 And it is extraordinary that this country has never had a female president or anywhere near, not even a vice president.

54:48 Brian Rose: What a change that would have been if having Hillary as opposed to Trump in there.

54:54 Christiane Amanpour: Well, you know, what a change. Yeah, well, not going there. Certainly would have been a change for women.

55:00 Brian Rose: Yeah, that’s true. Christiane, I always ask everyone here just a few questions at the end that I want to ask you. If you could pick up your mobile phone right now and make a phone call to the 20 year old Christiane and give that young woman a bit of advice. I guess you’d still be at university, right?

55:16 Christiane Amanpour: I hadn’t gone to Rhode Island yet.

55:18 I hadn’t gone to Rhode Island yet. I went to the University of Rhode Island as a late student. So it’s very simple. I would be amazed and pleased that I had a goal at 20. And my 20 year old self might be pleased to see that I reached that personal goal.

55:37 Brian Rose: And if you had some advice to give her now, now that you know everything, or at least more, what would you tell her?

55:45 Christiane Amanpour: I would tell her to be less black and white and more gray.

55:48 Brian Rose: Okay, so get to, okay, maybe get to that truth versus neutral observation earlier.

55:54 Christiane Amanpour: Yeah, and understand that at a certain time, you know, things can be very black and white when you’re young. But understand that, you know, you can judge less, you can be a little grayer while you’re making up, while you’re coming to your conclusions.

56:10 And I would, yeah, I would probably, yeah.

56:13 Brian Rose: On that same note, best advice you ever received? It could have come from a journalist, could it come from Ted Turner, your mom, your dad, just something that sticks in your mind.

56:23 Christiane Amanpour: I think the best advice I ever received was an unspoken advice, and it came from my parents when I was growing up. And that I only understood later. It was different religions can coexist, different nationalities and ethnicities can coexist, and as a woman, no door is shut to you.

56:40 That’s the life my parents lived, and that’s what I absorbed.

56:44 Brian Rose: Because the way your mother behaved and your father behaved, it was just always okay for you to do anything.

56:51 Christiane Amanpour: Yes, yes. And I would also say, and I think it’s important for parents to understand that your children are not you. Don’t force them to be you, or to follow your footsteps. Let them be themselves, and understand that your children are independent people, and get to know those independent people.

57:09 They’re not just an appendage of you.

57:11 Brian Rose: Okay, and on that same note, how do you parent? You said it’s very important the last ten years.

57:15 Christiane Amanpour: I’m learning that.

57:16 Brian Rose: Yeah, me too. But you said it’s very important to spend time with your son the last ten years, eight years, and make it happen.

57:22 How do you parent, and what have you learned about parenting?

57:25 Christiane Amanpour: Just with a love, and being there.

57:27 Brian Rose: Okay, time, it makes a difference, doesn’t it? Okay. And the last part of that question, to that 20-year-old that’s watching us, listening to us out there in the world, who maybe wants to figure out what the truth is, you know, and they don’t know.

57:41 They grew up in a generation where they were born with Facebook, and born with this news. Maybe they don’t understand this concept of a nuclear missile, you know, and things like that. What advice do you give to them? What can they do differently to either promote journalism, learn the truth, all of those things?

58:00 Christiane Amanpour: I think I would say, don’t get depressed. It’s a very troubling world that we live in, but there have been many, many cycles of trouble and, you know, world upheaval.

58:10 It’s a purpose. Find your mission as you go through life, and be responsible for finding the truth, and, you know, enlarge your circle of knowledge. Don’t get algorithmed into a tunnel. You know, don’t seek safe spaces in college. Seek debate.

58:30 Find the views that conflict with your views, and debate them, or see whether it changes your mind on anything. Don’t put yourself in one narrow corner, or shaft of light.

58:42 Brian Rose: And finally, what makes you continue to get up every day, and go out there and fight, and to do journalism, and where do you want to go in the next ten years?

58:54 Christiane Amanpour: I don’t know about the next ten years, but what motivates me is, I’m just a really positive person who loves life, and who still believes in the power of truth, and particularly in this age.

59:07 And obviously what motivates me is my son as well.

59:10 Brian Rose: Okay, fantastic. Kristin, thank you so much for coming on and speaking with us. Like I said, I still remember being 17 and in the kitchen watching you on CNN, and, you know, it was just wow. And maybe it told me…

59:23 Christiane Amanpour: Are you that much younger than me?

59:25 Brian Rose: Well, not that much younger. But, you know, maybe that was a lesson to me to see you out there, you know, breaking news in these dangerous places. And, you know, along with my mom, probably taught me a lot of great lessons about people and women and women and everything. So, thank you for that. Thank you for continuing to be on the front line, and putting things out there that are not popular, and calling people out that need to be called out.

59:47 Christiane Amanpour: And I think you’re so right. I think we need journalism, not reporters. And we need people to go in there and… We need reporters. Not just social media stars who think they’re reporters.

59:59 Brian Rose: Right. And you corrected me earlier by saying you pull out the truth, and a good journalist keeps their opinion from that truth. There’s another space for your opinion. But the journalist understands the truth with all the noise and all the nonsense, and that’s what you pull out. Thank you so much. As we say on London Real, it’s about the journey, and I wish you well on yours.

1:00:15 Christiane Amanpour: Thank you. Appreciate it.