Holly Williams | |
---|---|
![]() Williams conducts an interview for CBS News at Al Asad Airbase after a missile attack in 2020. | |
Born | Tasmania, Australia |
Education | Australian National University, Deakin University, Harvard University |
Occupation | Journalist |
Employer | CBS News |
Children | 2 |
Awards | Edward R. Murrow Award, Jack R. Howard Award, Polk Award, Free Expression Award |
Holly Williams is an Australian foreign correspondent and war correspondent who has worked for CBS since 2012. Prior to that, she worked for BBC News, CNN, and Sky News.
Williams grew up in Tasmania and Victoria, Australia. She attended high school in Victoria. [1] Growing up, she was interested in journalism. [2] Williams became interested in China when she was 12 years old while watching the Tiananmen Square Protests on television. At age 15 she persuaded her parents to let her visit China for three months [2] in an exchange program. [3]
Upon returning home she began studying Chinese in high school. [2] Williams became enamored with learning about and watching Chinese films, including “Farewell My Concubine,” directed by Chen Kaige. Years later as a reporter working in China, she interviewed Kaige. [3]
Williams obtained a bachelor's degree in Chinese language studies and Asian history from the Australian National University. [2] Then she earned a master's degree in international relations from Deakin University. After graduating, Williams became an intern for CNN working in China. [4]
From 2007 to 2008, Williams was a Nieman Fellow at Harvard University. [5]
After her internship, Williams began doing her own camera work, and covered the 2008 Summer Olympics in China. This led to her being hired for her first job as a correspondent [6] and she spent 12 years in China, becoming fluent in Chinese. She worked for BBC News, CNN, [4] and Sky News. [7]
Williams next worked as a war correspondent in conflict areas in Iraq, [5] [8] Yemen, [9] Pakistan, Afghanistan, Gaza, Syria and Libya. [10] She also reported from the conflict area in the Donbass region of Ukraine in the trenches in the line of separation from pro-Russian rebels. [11]
Williams was hired by CBS in October 2012. [7] She then studied Turkish when she was a correspondent in Turkey. [1]
On 21 August 2015, the New York Times included Williams in an article about leading female war correspondents. [10] Elle magazine profiled Williams and several other women in a March 2016 article on female correspondents at CBS. [12]
On 12 March 2017, 60 Minutes broadcast two segments Williams produced centered around a series of interviews she conducted with Mohamedou Slahi. [13] [14] Slahi was one of the few individuals held in Guantanamo that American officials explicitly acknowledge torturing. [15] CBS News described the interviews as Slahi's first television interviews since his repatriation. Williams traveled to Mauritania for those interviews. [13]
In 2022 Williams went back to Ukraine and began filing stories on the Russo-Ukrainian crisis. She visited eastern Ukraine to report on the war zone, where she was accompanied by Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy. [11]
Williams received the Edward R. Murrow Award and the Jack R. Howard Award for her war coverage of the terrorist organization ISIS. Williams and colleague Andrew Portch received the 2012 Polk Award for coverage of Chen Guangcheng, a Chinese human rights activist. [16] In 2019 she received the Free Expression Award for courageous acts. [17]
Williams also produced stories that won the Royal Television Society Award, the Foreign Press Association Award and the Golden Nymph. [5]
Williams is married and lives with her husband and their daughter and son in Istanbul, Turkey. [17]
60 Minutes is an American television news magazine broadcast on the CBS television network. Debuting in 1968, the program was created by Don Hewitt and Bill Leonard, who distinguished it from other news programs by using a unique style of reporter-centered investigation. In 2002, 60 Minutes was ranked number six on TV Guide's list of the "50 Greatest TV Shows of All Time", and in 2013, it was ranked number 24 on the magazine's list of the "60 Best Series of All Time". In 2023, Variety ranked 60 Minutes as the twentieth-greatest TV show of all time. The New York Times has called it "one of the most esteemed news magazines on American television".
Edward James Martin Koppel is a British-born American broadcast journalist, best known as the anchor for Nightline, from the program's inception in 1980 until 2005.
The CBS Evening News is the flagship evening television news program of CBS News, the news division of the CBS television network in the United States. The CBS Evening News is a daily evening broadcast featuring news reports, feature stories and interviews by CBS News correspondents and reporters covering events around the world. The program has been broadcast since July 1, 1941, under the original title CBS Television News, eventually adopting its current title in 1963.
Katherine Anne Couric is an American journalist and presenter. She is founder of Katie Couric Media, a multimedia news and production company. She also publishes a daily newsletter, Wake Up Call. From 2013 to 2017, she was Yahoo's Global News Anchor. Couric has been a television host at all of the Big Three television networks in the United States, and in her early career she was an assignment editor for CNN. She worked for NBC News from 1989 to 2006, CBS News from 2006 to 2011, and ABC News from 2011 to 2014. In 2021, she appeared as a guest host for the game show Jeopardy!, the first woman to host the flagship American version of the show in its history.
The Alfred I. duPont–Columbia University Award honors excellence in broadcast and digital journalism in the public service and is considered one of the most prestigious awards in journalism. The awards were established in 1942 and administered until 1967 by Washington and Lee University's O. W. Riegel, Curator and Head of the Department of Journalism and Communications. Since 1968 they have been administered by the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in New York City, and are considered by some to be the broadcast equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize, another program administered by Columbia University.
Anne Longworth Garrels was an American broadcast journalist who worked as a foreign correspondent for National Public Radio, as well as for ABC and NBC, and other media.
Face the Nation is a weekly news and morning public affairs program airing Sundays on the CBS radio and television network. Created by Frank Stanton in 1954, Face the Nation is one of the longest-running news programs in the history of television.
Mohamedou Ould Slahi is a Mauritanian engineer who was detained at Guantánamo Bay detention camp without charge from 2002 until his release on October 17, 2016.
Bob Lloyd Schieffer is an American television journalist. He is known for his moderation of presidential debates, where he has been praised for his capability. Schieffer is one of the few journalists to have covered all four of the major Washington national assignments: the White House, the Pentagon, United States Department of State, and United States Congress. His career with CBS has almost exclusively dealt with national politics. He has interviewed every United States President since Richard Nixon, as well as most of those who sought the office.
Morley Safer was a Canadian-American broadcast journalist, reporter, and correspondent for CBS News. He was best known for his long tenure on the news magazine 60 Minutes, whose cast he joined in 1970 after its second year on television. He was the longest-serving reporter on 60 Minutes, the most watched and most profitable program in television history.
Lara Logan is a South African television and radio journalist and war correspondent. Logan's career began in South Africa with various news organizations in the 1990s. Her profile rose due to reporting around the American invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. She was hired as a correspondent for CBS News in 2002, eventually becoming Chief Foreign Affairs Correspondent.
Brianna Marie Keilar is an American journalist who currently serves as a co-anchor of the afternoon edition of CNN News Central. She previously worked as a White House correspondent, senior political correspondent, Congressional correspondent and general assignment correspondent for CNN in Washington. Prior to that, Keilar worked at CNN Newsource as a national correspondent, also in Washington. Before joining New Day, she was the host of CNN Right Now with Brianna Keilar.
Armen Keteyian is an American television journalist and author of 13 non-fiction books, including six New York Times bestsellers. Most recently he was the anchor and an executive producer for The Athletic. Previously he spent 12 years as a network television correspondent for CBS News where he also served as a contributing correspondent to 60 Minutes. Keteyian is an 11-time Emmy award winner.
Sharyn Elizabeth Alfonsi is an American journalist and correspondent for 60 Minutes. She made her debut appearance on the show on March 1, 2015. In 2019, she received the prestigious duPont-Columbia journalism award and has reported from war zones in Iraq, Gaza, and Afghanistan.
Lilia Luciano is a journalist, filmmaker, podcaster and public speaker born and raised in Puerto Rico. She is currently a national correspondent and anchor at CBS News based in New York and host of the iHeart Radio podcast, El Flow. Before CBS News she worked as the investigative reporter at ABC 10 in Sacramento and was the chief investigative correspondent on Discovery Channel's Border Live. Her coverage of the mass shooting in Uvalde, Texas earned her and her CBS News team an Emmy Nomination for Outstanding Breaking News Coverage in 2023.
Clarissa Ward is a British-American television journalist who is the chief international correspondent for CNN. 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.
Joie Chen is a Chinese American television journalist as well as an Asian American broadcast journalist. She was the anchor of Al Jazeera America's flagship evening news show America Tonight, which was launched in August 2013. In January 2016, the channel announced it would close on 12 April 2016.
Ellison Litton Barber is an American journalist and correspondent for NBC News. She frequently reports from conflict zones and contributes reporting to all NBC News platforms, including NBC News, MSNBC and NBC News Now.
Stephanie Sy is an American television news anchor and reporter for the PBS NewsHour.
Isobel Yeung is a British long-form documentary senior correspondent. She has covered a variety of stories concerning major global issues such as ongoing world conflicts, terrorism, mass detention, and genocide. She has also reported on social issues in developing countries such as gender roles, women's rights, mental health and corruption. Her work has earned her two Emmy Awards and a Gracie Award.
I grew up in Australia. When I was little I lived in Tasmania, and then I went to high school in Victoria on the Australian mainland.
Williams, a 38-year-old Australian correspondent who has covered China and East Asia, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Gaza, Syria and Libya, says she has not noticed any sexism in the workplace but has been sexually harassed in the field. "There are parts of the world – I don't want to name them– where you're more likely to be sexually harassed and that's true whether you're a tourist or a local or a journalist."
Returning to the field just weeks after giving birth in 2012, Williams ventured deep into the jungles of Burma to do a story on tribal soldiers. She pumped every few hours to make sure that she'd still be able to breastfeed when she returned home.
'That shows the greatness of American people. Not- – my greatness because American people believe in justice. And they decided to give me a forum, to give me a voice,' Slahi told Holly Williams.
The correspondent Holly Williams and the cameraman Andrew Portch were recognized for their coverage of the human rights activist Chen Guangcheng, who fled China after years of being under house arrest for his work exposing how some Chinese women were forced to have abortions to comply with the country's one-child policy.