CNN’s Christiane Amanpour continued making the rounds to promote her 6-hour series, God’s Warriors. Tuesday night: The Late Show with David Letterman.
Letterman asked Amanpour about the “close to 100 newsmen and women” who have been killed covering the war in Iraq. “It really is a growing tragedy,” said Amanpour who is a board member of the Committee to Protect Journalists. Amanpour said the Committee “has a very chilling figure which basically states, the leading cause of death among journalists is deliberate.” “We’re not caught in the cross-fire,” she said, “we are deliberately targeted.”
Some other highlights:
• On balancing motherhood and being a foreign correspondent: “I am more fearful, more concerned. When you are a parent you have the responsibility to, at least, to try to stay alive.”
• On her start at CNN: “I had an English accent and dark hair and a rather different look than was prevalent back in 1983. They said it me, ‘hey, there’s this new network started by this guy Ted Turner and we’ve heard some English accents on it. Maybe that’s where you should go.'”
• On Turner during CNN’s early days when he “lived above the shop” and she was a weekend staffer: “we would see him after whatever he had been doing the night before, come down in his robe and, you know, generally walk around the newsroom.”
Part II of God’s Warriors airs tonight at 9pmET. I’ll have the ratings for part I this afternoon.