Christiane Amanpour is CNN’s chief international correspondent based in London. Amanpour has reported on most crises from many of the world’s hotspots, including Afghanistan, the Balkans, Iran, Iraq, the Middle East, Pakistan and Somalia to name just a few. Her assignments have ranged from exclusive interviews with Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat, Pakistan’s Gen. Pervez Musharraf and Iranian President Khatami to covering the civil unrest and political crisis in Rwanda as well as the ongoing war on terrorism in the aftermath of Sept. 11. In 2003, Amanpour led coverage of the Israeli elections. Additionally, she has received wide acclaim for her extensive reports on the conflict in the former Yugoslavia.
In May 1999, Amanpour secured the first-ever interview with Jordan’s then new monarch, King Abdullah. Additionally, she was the last journalist to interview the king’s father, the long-reigning King Hussein, just days before his death. She secured an exclusive interview with Hillary Rodham Clinton in May 1999 as well as an exclusive interview with Iran’s Khatami in December 1997. Her other high-profile interviews have included Arafat from his blockaded Ramallah compound in 2002; Pakistani President Musharraf during the beginning of the U.S.-led war against terrorism in 2001; former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak during the heightened peace negotiations in 2000; and Russia’s Mikhail Gorbachev in November 1999 at the 10th anniversary of the fall of communism.
Amanpour spent years on one of the most dangerous assignments journalists have faced in recent history, bringing the 1990s Bosnian tragedy into context and to the world’s attention. No other U.S. network correspondent has reported as continuously from this ethnically torn region. Amanpour subsequently covered the Slobodan Milosevic war crime trials at the Hague in 2001 and 2002. During the war in Iraq, Amanpour reported for CNN from several military locales, including with British troops on the Faw Peninsula. She later reported throughout Iraq, including inside Baghdad, on various issues, from troop engagements to the Iraqi perspective of the war.
For her reporting from the former Yugoslavia, Amanpour received a News and Documentary Emmy, two George Foster Peabody awards, two George Polk awards, a Courage in Journalism Award, a Worldfest-Houston International Film Festival Gold Award and the Livingston Award for Young Journalists. Additionally, the New York Chapter of Women in Cable and Telecommunications named her the 1994 Woman of the Year. She also helped CNN win a duPont Award for its coverage of Bosnia and a Golden CableACE for its Gulf War coverage.
Amanpour has been awarded numerous other honors, including another Emmy for her documentary “Struggle for Islam;” the 2002 Edward R. Murrow Award for Distinguished Achievement in Broadcast Journalism; the Sigma Chi Award for her reports from Goma, Zaire; two George Polk awards for her 1994 coverage of Bosnia; and for her work on the 1997 CNN International special “Battle for Afghanistan.”
Amanpour’s Gulf War reporting also received the Breakthrough Award from Women, Men and Media. Her contribution to the 1985 series “Iran: In the Name of God” helped CNN earn its first duPont Award.
Her reputation as a world-class correspondent began with her reporting on the dramatic changes occurring in central Europe during 1989 and 1990. During her assignment in the Persian Gulf, she covered the Gulf War from Iraq's 1990 invasion of Kuwait to the ensuing U.S. bombing of Baghdad and then the Kurdish refugee crisis on the Iran/Iraq border, which persisted after the cease-fire. She also covered the 1991 break-up of the Soviet Union and the subsequent war in Tbilisi. In December 1992, Amanpour reported live from the shores of Mogadishu, Somalia, as U.S. troops launched Operation: Restore Hope.
Amanpour began her CNN career in 1983 as an assistant on the network’s international assignment desk in Atlanta. She also has worked in CNN’s New York and Frankfurt bureaus. Additionally, she is a contributor to CBS News’ 60 Minutes.
Recently, Amanpour was named a Fellow of the Society of Professional Journalists, an honor recognizing significant contributions to journalism.
Before joining CNN, Amanpour worked at WJAR-TV, Providence, R.I., as an electronic graphics designer. From 1981-1982, she worked as a reporter, anchor and producer for WBRU-Radio, also in Providence.
Amanpour graduated summa cum laude from the University of Rhode Island with a bachelor of arts degree in journalism.
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Pierre Bairin is a field producer for CNN. He joined the network in 1992 when he traveled to war-torn Bosnia as a videotape editor with chief international correspondent Christiane Amanpour. Since then, Bairin has covered numerous breaking news events for CNN.
Bairin’s most recent coverage includes the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the South Asia tsunami, Hurricane Katrina and the Sudanese conflict in Darfur, where he again worked with Amanpour, this time as a producer.
Before joining CNN, Bairin served as chief videotape editor at Keynews TV in Brussels, Belgium. In 1997, he produced two episodes of Lonely Planet in Iran and Paris for the Discovery Networks in the United States and Channel 4 in the United Kingdom.
Bairin earned a master’s degree in journalism and communications from the University of Brussels. A native of Belgium, he is fluent in French.
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Peter Bergen – A terrorism analyst for CNN, Peter Bergen is a senior fellow at the New America Foundation in Washington, D.C.; an adjunct professor at the School of Advanced International Studies at Johns Hopkins University; and author of Holy War, Inc.: Inside the Secret World of bin Laden (Free Press, 2001).
Holy War, Inc., a New York Times bestseller, has been translated into 18 languages. A documentary based on the book aired on National Geographic television and earned an Emmy nomination in the research category.
Bergen ’s most recent book is The Osama bin Laden I Know: An Oral History of al Qaeda's Leader (Free Press, 2006). The book is being translated into French, Spanish, Arabic and Polish. CNN Presents produced a two-hour documentary In the Footsteps of bin Laden based on the book. In the Footsteps of bin Laden is scheduled to premiere on Wednesday, Aug. 23.
Richard Clarke, a former White House counterterrorism coordinator, reviewed the book in The Washington Post and wrote: “What made [bin Laden] into history's most successful terrorist? Peter L. Bergen has written what will long be a ‘go-to’ resource for those seeking answers to such questions…. The result is a detailed, well-researched narrative that persuasively answers dozens of questions that are still painfully relevant.”
A Foreign Affairs reviewer named it one of the best books of the past year about the Middle East.
Bergen has written about al Qaeda and terrorism for a variety of publications including The New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, The New Republic, Foreign Affairs, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, Rolling Stone, TIME, Vanity Fair, The Guardian, The London Times and The Daily Telegraph. He serves on the editorial board of Studies in Conflict & Terrorism, the leading scholarly journal in the field.
In 1997, as a producer for CNN, Bergen produced bin Laden's first television interview.
He was the recipient of the Leonard Silk Journalism Fellowship 2000 for Holy War, Inc, and, in 1994, he won the Overseas Press Club’s Edward R. Murrow award for best foreign affairs documentary for the CNN program “ Kingdom of Cocaine.”
Bergen earned a bachelor’s degree in modern history from New College, Oxford University in 1984.
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Cliff Hackel, an Emmy-awarding winning television producer/director/editor with more than 30 years of experience, is a producer and editor for CNN Productions. In that role, Hackel produces a variety of compelling long-form documentaries for CNN Presents, the most honored documentary series in cable news. He is based in CNN’s Washington, D.C., bureau.
For his documentaries, Hackel’s journalism has ranged from specials on U.S. health care to the impact of the global economy on the United States to the workings of Wall Street. Additionally, his work includes Duke Ellington's Washington and Rediscovering Dave Brubeck, two PBS documentaries about legendary jazz pianists. Another PBS documentary, Across the River, about community building in crime-plagued neighborhoods of Washington, won the prestigious Sidney Hillman Award, among others.
Hackel’s documentaries have won numerous other awards, including many CINE Golden Eagle Awards, five Emmy awards for work with ABC’s The Koppel Report, CBS’s The Kennedy Center Honors, CNN’s Impact and PBS’s Frontline and Watergate Plus 30. Most recently, he was part of the CNN team that received a George Foster Peabody Award for its Hurricane Katrina coverage.
Hackel is a graduate of George Washington University.
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Jonathan Klein is president of CNN/U.S., responsible for management oversight of all programming, editorial tone and strategic direction of the network. He reports to Jim Walton, president of CNN Worldwide.
Named to this position in November 2004, Klein previously served as president and chief executive officer of The FeedRoom, a broadband video company he founded in 1999. Under his direction, The FeedRoom became one of the leading online broadcasters in the world, delivering more than 1 million video clips each day to customers including CBS, NBC, ESPN, Reuters, Tribune television stations and newspapers, USA Today, Business Week, General Motors, Cisco Systems, Sun Microsystems, General Mills and the U.S. Department of Defense.
Before founding The FeedRoom, Klein was an executive vice president at CBS News, where he oversaw prime-time programming including 60 Minutes, 48 Hours and Public Eye With Bryant Gumbel. Klein also oversaw off-network production, guest booking, investigative reporting and strategic planning.
Klein began his television career in 1980 as a news producer at WLNE in Providence, R.I., and the following year moved to a similar position at WPIX-TV/Independent Network News in New York. In 1982, he joined CBS News as a writer and news editor on the overnight broadcast Nightwatch. He subsequently served as broadcast producer on CBS Morning News and then CBS Evening News Weekend Edition, where he won an Emmy Award for live coverage of the 1986 Reagan/Gorbachev summit in Reykjavik, Iceland.
In 1988, Klein joined the fledgling prime-time magazine series 48 Hours as a field producer, eventually winning an Emmy Award for coverage of Hurricane Hugo and a Peabody Award for an hour he produced on the anti-abortion movement. Klein served as senior producer for CBS’s 1990 late-night series America Tonight with Charles Kuralt and Lesley Stahl, as senior producer for the network’s coverage of the 1991 Gulf War and later for the documentary Back to Baghdad, in which foreign correspondent Bob Simon returned to the Middle East following his imprisonment by the Iraqis during the war.
In 1993, Klein launched a unique prime-time documentary series, Before Your Eyes, two-hour movies-of-the-week that explored social issues such as child abuse, AIDS and juvenile delinquency through the eyes of real people living through dramatic moments in their lives with the cameras rolling. The series, for which Klein served as executive producer and director, was acclaimed for pioneering new forms of storytelling and received numerous national awards.
In 1997, Klein conceived and executive produced the CBS documentary Inside the Jury Room, in which network television cameras were permitted for the first time to observe deliberations in a criminal trial. The documentary won a Columbia-DuPont Silver Baton.
Klein also wrote the story for the TNT Original film Buffalo Soldiers, a 1997 historical drama starring Danny Glover.
Klein graduated magna cum laude from Brown University in 1980 with a degree in history.
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Brian Larch is a producer and senior writer for CNN Presents. In that role since 2000, Larch develops and produces a variety of compelling long-form documentaries for the most honored documentary series in cable news. He is based in CNN’s world headquarters in Atlanta.
Larch also served as producer and senior writer for CNN’s People in the News from 2000 to 2005 and produced profiles of Halle Berry, Michael Caine, Dave Matthews, Rod Stewart, Billy Bob Thornton and many others.
An Emmy Award-winning producer, Larch joined CNN in 1995 as a copy editor, senior writer and package producer for the network’s main newscasts. In 1998, he became a senior writer and segment producer for CNN&TIME, a weekly newsmagazine program.
He began his broadcasting career at WQRA-FM in Warrenton, Va., as an anchor and reporter.
Larch graduated from Virginia Tech University a bachelor’s of arts degree in communication and a minor in history.
Mark Nelson is vice president and senior executive producer for CNN Productions. A veteran broadcast producer with nearly 30 years experience, Nelson is responsible for the network’s award-winning documentary series, CNN Presents, as well as special event programs.
Nelson joined CNN in 2004 as the senior executive producer of Paula Zahn Now, a nightly news and information program with interviews, current events news reports from CNN correspondents based around the globe, and analysis from experts in their field.
Nelson comes to CNN from the National Geographic Channel, where as vice president and executive producer he built a staff of more than 40 producers, correspondents, writers, editors and directors to launch and produce National Geographic Today, the network’s hour-long, signature documentary program. His unit also produced specials and other documentaries for the channel.
Before joining the National Geographic Channel in 2000, Nelson spent 11 years as the senior broadcast producer for ABC’s Nightline, a position where he produced numerous Emmy-winning broadcasts. At the same time, Nelson served as a senior producer for special events programming including broadcasts of political conventions in 1996 and 2000.
Nelson joined ABC News in 1982 as a producer and has served as chief of the network’s bureaus in Tel Aviv, Rome and the western United States. Nelson started his career in 1976 in Des Moines, Iowa, as senior producer and director of Iowa Public Television.
Nelson attended Drake University and studied political science.
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Ken Shiffman is a senior producer for CNN Presents. In that role, Shiffman conceives, researches and produces documentaries for CNN’s award-winning documentary program. He is based in CNN’s world headquarters in Atlanta.
During his 17-year tenure at CNN, Shiffman has gained extensive experience producing national and international documentaries, news magazine segments and day-of-air stories, collaborating with the network’s top anchors and correspondents. He has produced numerous investigative reports focusing on a broad array of subjects, including lead poisoning among urban children, widespread bankruptcy fraud in the United States, al Qaeda’s stronghold in Southeast Asia, mistreatment of retired racing dogs, medical insurance billing scams and flawed forensic sciences. He is senior producer for CNN Presents’ upcoming documentary In the Footsteps of bin Laden.
Shiffman has served as producer of interviews with world leaders, such as Afghan President Hamid Karzai, Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, and former U.S. President George H.W. Bush for CNN documentaries. He has produced live shots and taped segments for continuing coverage of major news stories, including the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the Bush/Gore Florida vote recount, the Olympic Park bombing, the 2006 Sago Mine disaster in West Virginia and the O.J. Simpson trial.
Shiffman joined CNN in 1989 as a researcher for CNN Special Assignment. He became a producer for a variety of CNN programs including CNN&Time in 1992 and then for CNN Presents in 2000. He has served as a senior producer since 2004.
A winner of more than 40 journalism awards, Shiffman’s work has earned three Emmy awards, four National Headliner first-place awards and an Overseas Press Club of America citation. He was part of the CNN staff that won a George Foster Peabody Award in 2006 for the network’s coverage of Hurricane Katrina.
Shiffman graduated from Washington University in St. Louis, Mo., with a degree in psychology and from the University of Missouri with a master’s in journalism.
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Kathy Slobogin is managing editor of CNN Presents, CNN’s award-winning documentary program. Named to this position in October 2002, she is responsible for all aspects of the long-form series, from story selection through the final cut. She is based in Washington, D.C.
Previously, Slobogin was the education and family-issues correspondent for CNN. Her work included weekly packages as well as live and interactive reports for the network. Before this, she worked as a senior correspondent for CNN&TIME, CNN’s weekly prime-time news magazine.
Before reporting for CNN&TIME, Slobogin served as senior correspondent for Impact, a weekly prime-time investigative newsmagazine. Her reports have covered a wide range of topics from exposing conditions in maximum-security prisons to uncovering corruption in the U.S. Forest Service. Slobogin joined the network’s special assignment unit as a producer in 1990; she was named a CNN correspondent in 1992.
In 1992 and 1996, Slobogin was a correspondent for CNN’s Democracy in America documentary series on presidential election issues. The series won the Joan Shorenstein Barone Award both years.
Slobogin is one of television's most accomplished producers and reporters of investigative news and documentaries. Slobogin came to CNN from CBS News, where she was a producer and writer for West 57th Street, starting in 1985. She was with ABC News from 1978-1985, first as field producer then associate producer and producer for the Close-Up documentary unit. Before joining ABC News, she wrote for The New York Times. She began her career as an assistant to the editor of The New York Review of Books in 1974.
Her many honors include Emmy awards in 1984 and 1995 and 2003 and an Emmy nomination in 2004, a 1984 Peabody Award for the critically acclaimed three-hour Close-Up documentary To Save Our Schools, To Save Our Children, and the 1982 Christopher Award for her work on another Close-Up series, FDR. Other awards include the 2000 Edward R. Murrow Award; Cable ACE awards in 1993, 1995 and 1996; CINE Golden Eagle awards in 1991, 1992, 1993, 1997 and 2004; the Headliners Award in 1990, 1996, 1997, 2000 and 2004; the 1994 Westinghouse Science Journalism Award; the 1980 Writer’s Guild Award; and a 1983 duPont-Columbia citation.
Slobogin earned a bachelor’s degree in English from Yale College, graduating summa cum laude, with honors in English and as a member of Phi Beta Kappa.
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For interview availability, please contact:
Jennifer Dargan, Jennifer.Dargan@turner.com, Atlanta (404)885-4638
Erica Puntel, Erica.Puntel@turner.com, Atlanta (404)827-1657
Christal Jones, Christal.Jones@turner.com, Radio (404)878-0285
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