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Delivering the 15th annual Christiane Amanpour Lecture, hosted by 溏心vlog免费B站\u2019s Harrington School of Communication and Media, Ferguson shared with an audience of about 200 people\u2014especially with the numerous journalism students in attendance\u2014the techniques she uses to capture the human side of global conflict in her reporting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The tip about crying on camera was one of the things not to do\u2014along with moralizing\u2014but she said it\u2019s open to debate, especially in today\u2019s world and given the advice she offered during the evening about bringing a human focus to war reporting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
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\u201cThe reality is that as reporters we\u2019re the conduits to tell these stories to help the audience understand and communicate with our subjects, these people who have been brave enough to share their feelings and their experiences with us,\u201d she said. \u201cIt\u2019s not about us. If we draw the [viewer\u2019s] attention to our own emotions, we rob their attention from the people whose stories we\u2019re here to tell.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Growing up in rural Northern Ireland, Ferguson said she had a wanderlust and dreamed of being a foreign correspondent from a young age. She was fascinated by women correspondents on the BBC, traveling the world, interviewing important people, and catching the attention of the men in her house who would hush those around them so they could listen to the women reporters. Something she hadn\u2019t seen them do \u201cin real life.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cI also grew up during a [sectarian] conflict in Northern Ireland \u2026 and I was fascinated,\u201d she said. \u201cI grew up down the road from a bunch of farmers who brought the British government to its knees with some bags of fertilizer and smuggled shotguns. In retrospect, I couldn’t understand what would make a normal person\u2014bakers, farmers, taxi drivers\u2014commit acts of violence. And what made communities hate one another.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When she was 25, she acted on her wanderlust and hopped a plane to Afghanistan to cover the conflict\u2014or, as she referred to it Thursday, the \u201cbang bang\u201d\u2014with no formal training as a journalist. She was a very green, cub reporter with a fantasized view of what covering a conflict meant, she said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Luckily for her, she was assigned by her newspaper to do a profile of British-Australian war photographer Tim Page, famous for his work during the Vietnam War. \u201cI thought of him as one of the toughest and certainly one of the most brave and grizzled reporters out there,\u201d she said. \u201cThe afternoon I spent with Tim Page was extremely eye-opening. What I found out not only surprised, but it massively informed me and shaped me as a reporter.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What she learned was the importance of showing through her reporting the impact of conflict, war and oppression on the everyday people living through it, and the importance of presenting them as well-rounded \u201ccharacters\u201d and intertwining the news through their experiences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To emphasize her points during her talk, Ferguson shared several PBS NewsHour videos of her reporting in Kabul, Afghanistan, in the wake Taliban rule, while also reading from her upcoming memoir and a 1995 New York Times story by Roger Cohen on the toll of war in Sarajevo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The \u201cfirst and foremost backbone\u201d of covering war with a humanist perspective, she said, is telling stories through the eyes of those living through it. \u201cI can\u2019t emphasize enough that that\u2019s really where you start,\u201d she said, \u201cwhen you\u2019re trying to communicate to your audience, your viewers and your readers, how war is actually impacting human beings.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In finding those \u201ccharacters,\u201d she stressed that she\u2019s not looking simply for a \u201csound bite.\u201d Bringing that home, Ferguson showed a clip of her report on Dr. Najmussana Shefajo, a leading gynecologist in Kabul, who Ferguson interviewed numerous times. After the Taliban came to power, Shefajo considered giving up her hospital and leaving the country for the sake of her daughters\u2019 future.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cTo build a character rather than an interview takes time,\u201d Ferguson added. \u201cYou have to approach someone like her with sensitivity and an absolute openness to listen.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
While the use of \u201ccharacters\u201d makes the reports more relatable to viewers, it also helps them absorb the news and allows reporters to more fully report on complex issues\u2014such as the oppression of women, or the plight of refugees\u2014that are part of the conflict.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They also provide \u201crich insight\u201d into what people trapped in the conflict are living through\u2014their fears, strengths, sacrifices, she said, after showing an interview with Shaharzad Akbar, the head of human rights in Afghanistan, who lived through the assassination of numerous friends and colleagues by the Taliban.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
During a question-and-answer session, Ferguson\u2014who has won Polk, Emmy, Peabody, and duPont awards, among others\u2014was joined by 溏心vlog免费B站 alumnus Vladimir Duthiers \u201991, a CBS News correspondent and anchor, who asked her how she holds on to her humanity and handles the pressure of moving from one conflict to another.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cYou have to take care of yourself,\u201d she answered. \u201cAdded into the subliminal trauma that we\u2019re all experiencing while working is the fact that we\u2019re also physically and emotionally exhausted. \u2026 So, there\u2019s this little valve of emotion that I think we have to release, whether it\u2019s in the car or it\u2019s in your hotel room in the evenings. I must admit I\u2019m guilty of trying to hold it together a lot until I\u2019m home. And then I have what I call the big cry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIn terms of keeping your humanity,\u201d she added, \u201cthe reality is I don\u2019t understand how anybody could become numb to these things. I wouldn\u2019t do this job if I didn’t really care. I\u2019m a public broadcaster. I\u2019m not making millions of dollars. I\u2019m working incredibly long hours. You don\u2019t do this for glamour. You only can sustain it at this level if you actually care.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
To view Ferguson\u2019s presentation in full, please go to the lecture webpage<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Christiane Amanpour Lecture Series was endowed in 2008 by Amanpour \u201983, Hon. 95, the longtime CNN chief international anchor and global correspondent, and brings national and international journalists to the 溏心vlog免费B站 campus each fall. To donate to the Amanpour Lecture fund, click here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" KINGSTON, R.I. \u2013 Oct. 24, 2022 \u2013 PBS NewsHour correspondent Jane Ferguson, a veteran of war reporting from such conflict hot spots as Yemen, Iraq, Afghanistan, and Ukraine, says she\u2019s a crier. Sad movies and holiday ads showing a dog abandoned in the snow can get her going. \u201cI\u2019m a human being. I throw my […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":25,"featured_media":81310,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-81309","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-archives"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81309","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/25"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=81309"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81309\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":81345,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/81309\/revisions\/81345"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/81310"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=81309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=81309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.uri.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=81309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}