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USA Edition | Today Is Sunday, March 21, 2010 |
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This Week Host Christiane Amanpour
With Christiane we have the opportunity to provide our audiences with something different on Sunday mornings,” Westin said in a memo to ABC News staffers.
David Westin
President, ABC News
Washington
Newsroom Magazine
This Week To Take On Both National And International Issues
ABC News President David Westin
ABC News President David Westin has chosen Christiane Amanpour, one of the world’s most prestigious journalists, to replace George Stephanopoulos on ABC’s This Week broadcast. Amanpour will take over the broadcast in August. Until then, Jake Tapper will continue as interim host of the broadcast.
What Ms. Amanpour will bring to This Week broadcast are immense intellect and a world view of issues far beyond what’s previously been seen on the network Sunday public issues programs. But one might wonder, after her 28 years in and around CNN, why Amanpour would choose to join ABC news at a time when its own future is uncertain and its management caught in immense staff reductions.
Ms. Amanpour accepted her new position after 28 challenging and sometimes difficult years at CNN. Many have cited Amanpour’s British and Iran roots — qualities that provided her unique access to and understanding of both Western and Middle Eastern cultures — as something of a disqualification for an American domestic policy broadcast.
Such questions overlook what is most unique about Ms. Amanpour — for she is both a gifted reporter-journalist and a highly-principled and responsible adult. In broadcast journalism today, where skeptical editing ( of the sort done by ABC News Anchor Peter Jennings ) is all but gone, what Amanpour brings to ABC is a degree of journalistic integrity reminiscent of its former glory.
Last June, Newsroom Magazine wrote of Amanpour [ Absent Good Journalism, The Bad People Win ], as one of the best journalists in modern times.
Amanpour clearly sees herself as one of the good people. Her peers concur, even those who lack the guts to stand with her. Historically, Amanpour carries the mantle of great broadcast journalists gone before. Men like John Chancellor, Roger Mudd, Bernard Shaw — and pioneering women including Nancy Dickerson, Pauline Frederick and Marya McLaughlin. But Amanpour brings something more to her employers and her profession for she is not cowed by power and money, nor fearful, nor driven by self-interest.
As did Edward R. Murrow a half-century before, Christiane Amanpour spoke to her peers at a national convention of the Radio and Television News Directors Association. And, like Murrow, she told them what everyone knew but wanted to overlook,
Yes, you are running businesses, and yes, we understand and accept that, but surely there must be a level beyond which profit from news is simply indecent.