Clarissa Ward

Last updated

Clarissa Ward
Clarissa Ward holding Peabody Award 2012 (cropped).jpg
Ward in 2012
Born (1980-01-31) January 31, 1980 (age 45)
London, England
Education Yale University (BA)
OccupationJournalist
Years active2003–present
Notable credit CBS News
Spouse
Philipp von Bernstorff
​
​
(m. 2016)​
Children3

Clarissa Ward (born January 31, 1980) [1] is a British-American television journalist who is the chief international correspondent for CNN. [2] Previously, she was with CBS News, based in London. Before her CBS News position, Ward was a Moscow-based news correspondent for ABC News programs. [3]

Contents

Early life

Ward was born in London to a British father and American mother. [4] [5] She grew up in London and New York City and attended the Godstowe and Wycombe Abbey boarding schools in England. [6] [4] [7] She graduated from Yale University in 2002, and holds an honorary doctor of letters degree from Middlebury College. [3] [8]

Career

Early career

Ward began her career as an overnight desk assistant at Fox News in 2003. From 2004 to 2005, she was an assignment editor for Fox News in New York City. She worked on the international desk coordinating coverage for stories such as the capture of Saddam Hussein, the Indian Ocean tsunami in 2004 and the deaths of Yasir Arafat and Pope John Paul II. In 2006, she worked as a field producer for Fox News. She produced coverage of the Israeli-Lebanese war, the kidnapping of Gilad Shalit and subsequent Israeli military action in the Gaza Strip, the trial of Saddam Hussein and the 2005 Iraqi constitutional referendum.

Prior to October 2007, Ward was based in Beirut and worked as a correspondent for Fox News. She covered the execution of Saddam Hussein, the Iraq War troop surge of 2007, the Beirut Arab University riots and the 2007 Bikfaya bombings. She conducted interviews with notable figures such as Gen. David Petraeus, Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Barham Salih and Lebanese President Emile Lahoud. She also spent time embedded with the U.S. military in Iraq, most notably in Baqubah. [6]

ABC News

From October 2007 [6] to October 2010, Ward was an ABC News correspondent based in Moscow.[ citation needed ] She reported from Russia for all ABC News broadcasts and platforms, including World News with Charles Gibson , Nightline and Good Morning America , as well as ABC News Radio, and ABC News Now. On assignment in Russia, she covered the 2008 Russian presidential election. She was in Georgia at the time of the Russian intervention into Georgian territory. She was transferred to Beijing to serve as the ABC News Asian Correspondent, where she covered the 2011 Tōhoku earthquake and tsunami in Japan. She has also covered the war in Afghanistan. [3]

CBS News

Ward's CBS career started as the network's foreign news correspondent in October 2011. She was a contributor for 60 Minutes and served as a fill-in anchor on CBS This Morning beginning in January 2014. [9]

Work at CNN

On September 21, 2015, CNN announced that Ward was joining the network and reporting for all of CNN's platforms, and would remain based in London. With more than a decade as a war correspondent, on August 8, 2016, she spoke at a United Nations Security Council meeting on the situation in the civil war-torn Aleppo. [10] [11]

In July 2018, CNN named her its chief international correspondent, succeeding Christiane Amanpour. In 2019, she became one of the first Western journalists to report on the life in areas controlled by the Taliban in Afghanistan. [12] [13] In August 2020, reports emerged that she and her team were under surveillance [ by whom? ] while in the Central African Republic in May 2019. [14]

In December 2020, in a joint investigation by The Insider and Bellingcat in co-operation with CNN and Der Spiegel , she reported how Russian Federal Security Service (FSB) members stalked Alexei Navalny for years, including just before his poisoning in August 2020. [15] The investigation detailed a special unit of the FSB specializing in chemical substances and investigators tracked members of the unit using telecom and travel data.

In February 2022, CNN deployed Ward, initially, to the city of Kharkiv, in order to cover the beginning of the Russian Invasion in Ukraine. After the first days of war, she was relocated to Kyiv, where she engaged in a series of wartime reports on the advance of Russian troops and the flight of Ukrainian refugees away from Russian artillery strikes. [16] She was among the journalists who travelled to Ukraine to give insights into the humanitarian situation for children and wounded civilians in Ukrainian hospitals amidst the ongoing conflict. [17]

In December 2023, Ward covered the Israel-Hamas war. In a six-minute video report, she depicted the grim conditions in Gaza, emphasizing the impact on civilians and describing them as the worst she had seen in the strip in her 20 years as a reporter. Visiting a UAE-operated field hospital, Ward witnessed overwhelmed medical staff and interviewed an injured girl. While her report received praise, some criticized the attention, urging equal recognition for Palestinian journalists and aid workers. Ward faced past controversies, including accusations of fabricating a live report and misquoting UN statistics in her coverage of Gaza. [18]

Fall of Assad coverage and controversy

In December 2024, amidst the fall of the Assad regime, Ward was accused of faking an interview with an alleged prisoner of said regime. The man was shown being discovered by her crew in a prison, hidden under a blanket, later being told he was free to go and shown walking out gripping Ward's arm. However, he looked well and his cell was clean. CNN has denied staging the report and has defended Ward. [19] After this report, Syrian fact-checking group Verify-Sy found that the man gave a fake identity. [20] [21] CNN would later confirm the man featured was an intelligence officer, and not an ordinary citizen who had been imprisoned. First identifying himself as Adel Ghurbal, he was later found to be Salama Mohammad Salama, a lieutenant in the Assad regime's Air Force Intelligence Directorate. [22] [23] [24] [25]

Awards

Ward received a Peabody Award on May 21, 2012, in New York City for her journalistic coverage inside Syria during the Syrian uprising. [26] [27] In October 2014, Washington State University announced that she would receive the 2015 Murrow Award for International Reporting in April 2015. [28] She has also received seven Emmy Awards, an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia Silver Baton, and honors from the Radio and Television Correspondents' Association. [29]

Personal life

In November 2016, at London's Chelsea Old Town Hall, Ward married Philipp von Bernstorff, a German fund manager, whom she had met at a 2007 dinner party in Moscow. [30] [31] They have three children, all boys, born 2018, 2020, and 2023. [32] [33] [34]

Her oldest son suffers from a rare genetic anomaly. Ward co-founded the Foundation for ARID1B Research after he was diagnosed. [35]

Ward speaks fluent English, French and Italian, conversational Russian, Arabic, and Spanish, and knows basic Mandarin Chinese. [27] [29]

Bibliography

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References

  1. ↑ Ward 2020, p. 18.
  2. ↑ "International Correspondent Clarissa Ward Joins CNN". CNN. September 21, 2015. Archived from the original on September 22, 2015. Retrieved August 20, 2021.
  3. 1 2 3 "Clarissa Ward". CBS News. Archived from the original on February 23, 2015. Retrieved August 20, 2021.
  4. 1 2 "Clarissa Ward". The Female Lead Society. Archived from the original on October 25, 2020. Retrieved August 20, 2021.
  5. ↑ Morrell, Michael (June 2, 2021). "Author and war correspondent Clarissa Ward on reporting from conflict zones". Intelligence Matters. CBS News. Archived from the original on August 20, 2021. Retrieved August 20, 2021.
  6. 1 2 3 "Clarissa Ward". ABC News . June 2, 2006. Archived from the original on September 7, 2010. Retrieved August 20, 2022.
  7. ↑ Ward 2020, pp. 20–22.
  8. ↑ Ward 2020, p. 24.
  9. ↑ "CBS This Morning episode". January 20, 2014. Retrieved January 20, 2014.
  10. ↑ Ward, Clarissa (August 12, 2016). "There are no winners in Aleppo". CNN.com. Archived from the original on June 26, 2017. Retrieved July 26, 2017.
  11. ↑ "Aleppo Under Siege: Syria's Latest Tragedy Unfolds - Security Council Arria-Formula Open Meeting (8 August 2016)". United Nations. Archived from the original on June 6, 2021. Retrieved July 26, 2017.
  12. ↑ "36 hours with the Taliban". www.cnn.com. Archived from the original on August 12, 2020. Retrieved April 27, 2019.
  13. ↑ "CNN's Clarissa Ward Spent 36 Hours With the Taliban. This is What She Learned". www.globaldispatchespodcast.com. Archived from the original on April 27, 2019. Retrieved April 27, 2019.
  14. ↑ Dobrokhotov, Roman; Grozev, Christo; Lehberger, Roman; Schmid, Fidelius (August 21, 2020). "Russische Söldner sollen CNN-Team ausspioniert haben" [Russian mercenaries are said to have spied on CNN team]. Der Spiegel (in German). Archived from the original on August 30, 2023. Retrieved July 1, 2021.
  15. ↑ Lister, Tim; Ward, Clarissa; Shukla, Sebastian (December 14, 2020). "CNN-Bellingcat Investigation Identifies Russian Specialists Who Trailed Putin's Nemesis Alexey Navalny Before He Was Poisoned". CNN. Archived from the original on September 29, 2021. Retrieved December 14, 2020.
  16. ↑ "See moment that made Clarissa Ward stop reporting and help". cnn.com. March 5, 2022. Archived from the original on March 5, 2022. Retrieved March 5, 2022.
  17. ↑ "CNN makes heartbreaking visit to Ukraine's largest children's hospital". cnn.com. March 4, 2022. Archived from the original on March 5, 2022. Retrieved March 5, 2022.
  18. ↑ "CNN reporter sees 'horror of modern war' from inside Gaza". The New Arab . December 15, 2023. Archived from the original on December 19, 2023. Retrieved December 19, 2023.
  19. ↑ "CNN says "continuing to investigate" identity of alleged Syrian detainee in controversial report". Arab News. December 17, 2024. Retrieved December 17, 2024.
  20. ↑ "CNN confirms identity of freed Syrian prisoner as Assad intelligence officer". Middle East Eye. Retrieved January 2, 2025.
  21. ↑ Al-Hamwi, Abdul-Salam. "Updated: Did CNN Fabricate the Story of "Freeing a Syrian Detainee from a Secret Prison"?". verify-sy.com. Verify Sy. Retrieved January 2, 2025.
  22. ↑ Kourdi, Eyad; Lister, Tim (December 16, 2024). "Freed prisoner who said he was a victim of the Assad regime was an intelligence officer, locals say". CNN. Retrieved December 17, 2024.
  23. ↑ "Truth or Fake - CNN investigates Syrian prisoner's 'false identity' in Clarissa Ward report". France 24. December 16, 2024. Retrieved December 17, 2024.
  24. ↑ "CNN launches investigation after Syrian prisoner rescue report faces intense scrutiny". Middle East Eye. Retrieved December 17, 2024.
  25. ↑ Barr, Jeremy. "CNN says it was misled by man freed in Syria report with Clarissa Ward" . Retrieved December 17, 2024.
  26. ↑ "The CBS Evening News with Scott Pelley: Inside Syria". The Peabody Awards. Archived from the original on October 18, 2022. Retrieved October 18, 2022.
  27. 1 2 Casserly, Meghan (April 19, 2012). "Dream Jobs: Clarissa Ward, CBS News Foreign Correspondent". Forbes . Archived from the original on June 23, 2012. Retrieved June 4, 2012.
  28. ↑ "CBS News correspondent to receive Murrow College award". Washington State University. October 17, 2014. Archived from the original on December 5, 2014. Retrieved November 30, 2014.
  29. 1 2 "Clarissa Ward". CNN . Archived from the original on December 17, 2020. Retrieved January 5, 2021.
  30. ↑ Palmer, Anna; Sherman, Jake; Lippman, Daniel; Lacy, Akela (July 12, 2018). "Politico Playbook Power Briefing: Partisan Brawl Breaks Out in Strzok Hearing". Politico. Archived from the original on November 28, 2020. Retrieved December 26, 2020.
  31. ↑ Kim, Leena (April 20, 2017). "An Award-Winning Journalist's London Wedding". Town & Country. Archived from the original on October 28, 2020. Retrieved August 20, 2021.
  32. ↑ Katz, A. J. (March 7, 2018). "Clarissa Ward Gives Birth to Baby Boy". adweek.it. Archived from the original on November 25, 2023. Retrieved December 21, 2020.
  33. ↑ "Clarissa Ward on Instagram: "On Monday June 29th, 2020 at 929am Caspar Hugo Augustus Idris von Bernstorff was born and three became four. The most blissful blessing!…"". Instagram. Archived from the original on December 24, 2021. Retrieved December 21, 2020.
  34. ↑ "CNN's Clarissa Ward Welcomes Her Third Baby". People. May 24, 2023. Archived from the original on June 24, 2023. Retrieved June 24, 2023.
  35. ↑ "About Us". Foundation for ARID1B Research. June 10, 2024. Retrieved December 10, 2024.
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