Jongens jongens jongens. Christiane Amanpour staat op CNN al uren aan een stuk te spreken in het midden van een zandstorm in Koeweit. Nog altijd een ferme madam, maar ik herinner mij haar first time around — myum.
Maar daarnaast is mijn bwondering alleen maar groter geworden toen ik deze speech van haar, gegeven in 2000, las:
Before my son was born I used to joke about looking for bullet-proof Snugglies and Kevlar diapers. I was planning, I told everybody, to take him on the road with me. At the very least I fully expected to keep up my hectic pace, and my passion as a war correspondent. But now, like every working mother, when I think of my son, and having to leave him, and I imagine him fixing those large innocent eyes on me and asking me, “Mummy, why are you going to those terrible places? What if they kill you?” I wince.
I know that I want to say, that it’s because I have to, because it matters, because Mummy’s going to tell the world about the bad guys and perhaps do a little good.
But a strange thing has happened, something I never expected. Sadly, marriage and motherhood have coincided with the demise of journalism as I knew it and I dreamt that it would always be. I am no longer sure that when I go out there and do my job it’ll even see the light of air, if the experience of my network colleagues is anything to go by. More times than I care to remember I have sympathized with too many of them assigned like myself, to some of the world’s royal bad places. They would go through hell to do their pieces, only to frequently find them killed back in New York, because of some fascinating new twist on “killer Twinkies” or Fergie getting fatter, or something. I have always thought it morally unacceptable to kill stories, not to run stories, that people have risked their lives to get.
Dat en meer, bijvoorbeeld hoe ze begon bij CNN (hilarisch!) en wat ze denkt over de media en commercie en dingen. Beetje chaotisch naar het einde toe (ik vermoed dat ze nacht heeft doorgestoken om haar speech in mekaar te boksen :), maar wel uit het hart. Fijn.