Clarissa Ward, CNN Chief International Correspondent: You cannot go into this work thinking, "I'm going to stop a massacre here.

I'm going to change American policy on X, Y, or Z there."

No.

Your job is to go in, to inform, to bear witness, to hold people in power accountable.

Marcia Franklin, Host: Coming up, I talk with Clarissa Ward, the chief international correspondent for CNN.

That's "Conversations from the Sun Valley Writers' Conference."

Stay with us.

Announcer: Major funding is provided by the Idaho Public Television Endowment and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.

Franklin: Hello and welcome.

I'm Marcia Franklin.

On September 11th, 2001, Clarissa Ward was in college studying comparative literature.

She thought she might want to become an actress.

But when the Twin Towers collapsed, Ward had an epiphany.

She needed to understand what had happened, and why.

As she puts it, "I wanted to go to the tip of the spear."

In the two decades since then, she's certainly done that – and more.

Ward, who went on to become a television journalist, has reported from some of the most dangerous places in the world.

Her work has garnered two Peabody awards, 10 national Emmys and two Edward R. Murrow awards, among many other honors.

In 2015, she joined CNN, and in 2018 was promoted to chief international correspondent for that network.

That's also the year in which she and her husband welcomed the first of their three children.

As you will hear, it was becoming a mother that inspired her to write a memoir, "On All Fronts: The Education of a Journalist."

I sat down with Ms. Ward at the 2024 Sun Valley Writers' Conference to talk about the book, as well as to get her reflections on the role of a journalist during an increasingly fraught time for the profession.

Franklin: Well, welcome.

Welcome to Idaho.

I understand this is your first time here.

Ward: It is my first time.

Thank you.

And it is so beautiful and so peaceful and so wonderful to be here, and very excited for this conference.

Franklin: Well, I hope you can get out and enjoy the outdoors just a little bit.

You're coming in from London, right?

Ward: I'm coming in from London.

I have escaped my wonderful husband and three children.

So yes, I hope to do some walking, some reading and just have some quiet time.

Franklin: You're adventurous.

Go paragliding.

Ward: No, definitely not.

It's funny, I'm adventurous in my work.

In my home life I'm like, very nervous.

No paragliding, no parachuting; even skiing makes me nervous, so.

Franklin: I really lived vicariously reading this memoir, because although I would not have wanted to be in all of the danger zones that you're in, international affairs has always been kind of secretly my first love.

And reading about the places that you've been and the people you've worked with is just amazing.

What a life you've already had.

Ward: Thank you.

Yeah, it's not for everyone and it's not been without its challenges, but I feel very, very privileged.

Franklin: And I understand that in part, you wrote this book for your son.

Ward: That's right.

I had been told and asked many times for a long time that I should try to write a book.

And for some reason it always filled me with a lot of fear and anxiety, and I felt like it would be so much work, and I felt like maybe my writing wasn't good enough, and I felt like it would be very solitary.

And what I love about television is how collaborative it is.

And so I just kept putting it off and kept putting it off.

And then at a certain point I became pregnant with my first son.

And I realized that I desperately wanted to have a record for him and for any other kids who – well, did end up coming along -- that they would have a sense of who mom is, other than being mom.

And what my career was about, and why I took the risks I took and places I went to.

And so that was really the inspiration for it.

Franklin: Memoirs can be really tricky.

Ward: Mmm.

Franklin: Because you can write a lot of wonderful things, which you did, about your fixers and the people who helped you and your mentors.

But you know -- you dish a little bit here.

I mean there's a few people you call out Ward: Mmm.

Franklin: …in terms of television executives and things like that.

And your experience as a woman.

Was that, was that difficult to do, or was there a certain sense of, "This has to be done, I need to tell it like it was?"

Ward: I think it's really important, and I think particularly as a woman, to be honest about your experiences.

Not to sensationalize, not to try to hop on a bandwagon because it might be trendy, but to be really open.

And when you're starting out in this industry, particularly as a young woman, it's very hard.

People feel completely comfortable making all sorts of comments about your appearance, how you should be dressing, how you should be doing your makeup.

In my case, endlessly, how you should be wearing your hair.

"Why do you wear your hair up?

That's so weird.

Everyone wears their hair down, can't you try and cut it?

Can you try and wear it this way?"

And I was like, "How about if I just wear it the way I wear it?"

And you know what's so funny?

Ten years later, all those television executives are like, "I love the way you wear your hair.

It's so elegant."

And like, or whatever.

I think we've come a really long way, but I think it's important to be honest, because otherwise people think that you had some majestic ascent into this industry.

And that's not the way it works for any of us.

All of us have our struggles.

You have to be willing, obviously, to accommodate the industry that you're working with and take into account critiques and learn and grow.

But you really need to be yourself.

No one has ever become truly successful or great at what they do by turning away from their intuition and their conviction and just obsessing about what other people think about their appearance, for example.

Franklin: You could have called this book, "On All Fronts, My Life in the World's Most Dangerous War Zones."

You called it "On All Fronts, the Education of a Journalist."

Ward: Mmm.

Franklin: Talk to me about why you wanted those words, "The Education of" in the title, why that's so important as a theme.

Ward: Well, first of all, I think the book really fundamentally is a love letter to journalism.

But it's also a really transparent look at that arc of, of what it takes to become a great journalist.

This isn't something that happens overnight.

You might have the essential ingredients, whether it's curiosity, a natural ability to communicate, facility with languages, a certain level of courage or chutzpah, whatever it might be.

But it's only after years and years of working and honing your craft that you're really going to start doing the kind of journalism that will make you the most proud, I think.

And I wanted people to understand the amount of work that goes into that.

Because so much of what we do, particularly when we're covering conflict, it's not just about understanding the story, it's about the logistics of getting to these places, of operating in these places, of transmitting live from incredibly difficult and dangerous environments.

And also, I think fundamentally this sort of narrative arc of coming to terms with what we're not able to do as journalists, the limitations of journalism, the very real learning experience I had of the difference between activism and journalism or making policy and journalism.

Franklin: I did want to ask you about that for sure, because you highlighted at one point -- you're so upset, understandably, about what's going on in Aleppo.

And you're seeing, and you're the only journalist, really, I mean you've been asked to testify about it.

And you wrote a letter to an official.

Ward: Ben Rhodes.

Franklin: Calling him out, you know, and saying, "What's America doing?"

Ward: Yeah.

Franklin: And you could have not put that in, you know, but you used it as an example of how much you cared.

And yet that's an area where is it starting to bleed over into advocacy?

Ward: Totally.

And I, I think I'm pretty clear on I crossed the line when I did that.

And it's not that I regret crossing the line, because it's, we're human.

And we do become emotional, and we become very attached to stories as conflict journalists.

But I think it's important to have the self-awareness to know when one has crossed the line, to think about why one crossed it, and then to take a step back and say, "You know, this is the mandate of a journalist."

You cannot go into this work thinking, "I'm going to stop a massacre here.

I'm going to change American policy on X, Y, or Z there."

No.

Your job is to go in, to inform, to bear witness, to hold people in power accountable.

And it's possible that in the process of doing that, you will be contributing to some kind of a change.

But that can't be your intention at the outset.

And if it is your intention, then you're probably more suited to something like activism.

Franklin: Or commentary.

Ward: Or commentary.

Or government; go into policymaking.

Franklin: Mm-hmm.

There's a sense now that people imbue journalists, that they think that journalists should be activists.

Ward: There is a crushing amount of pressure on you as a journalist to take a side.

And everybody says, "You need to make a stand!"

And actually what you really need to do as a journalist is -- I believe -- inform people, tell both sides of the story.

With all conflicts, not just Gaza and Israel.

With Ukraine.

We need to be understanding what Russia's motivations are, what Russian mothers who are burying their sons in record numbers, who are going into the meat grinder every day; we need to be telling this part of the story, too.

And we need to be telling these stories with equal humanity.

Whether a child is Palestinian, whether a child is Ukrainian, the death of a child is a tragedy.

Franklin: Um, I want to talk about something that's quite poignant and it is in your memoir and that is 9/11.

9/11 was completely transformative for you.

You were, I believe, a senior… Ward: Mm-hmm.

Franklin: …in college, um, and hadn't really been headed for the life that we know you in.

And it completely changed your trajectory.

Ward: So I was beginning my senior year; I was studying comparative literature at Yale.

I thought that I wanted to be an actress at the time.

And my friends and I were making movies and starting magazines.

And 9/11 happened, and you know, for everyone, it was a moment I think where a lot of people felt called to service.

For me, that service felt like it needed to be understanding how this happened, understanding why it happened.

And I became convinced very quickly that underpinning this horror was fundamental lack of communication.

There was this chasm between the way America saw itself and its role in the world, and the way much of the world saw America.

And so I decided in that moment that I felt I had a calling.

That I wanted to go to the tip of the spear, that I wanted to try to be a translator between worlds.

And that I wanted to not only bring back a better understanding to Americans of what was going on, but bring maybe a better understanding to the worlds of America as well.

I was 22, so it was a lot of hubris and sort of lofty idealism, but that's really how it started.

And on a fundamental level, I think it's still a big part of what drives me.

And it's painful.

It's painful because you realize that a lot of the things that you thought and believed about your country are not necessarily -- it's not that they're not necessarily true, but there is such complexity around these issues.

And it changes the way you see the world.

Franklin: You have, um, kind of a natural temerity.

You know, you were very young, and yet once you decided to pursue this profession, you went at it doggedly.

And even though you didn't have a lot of experience, you said, you know, "Trust me, try me.

I'm going to do it."

Ward: Mmm.

Franklin: Where does that come from, do you suppose?

Ward: Uh, it really came from my mother, if I'm being honest.

My mother has always pushed me very hard, um, not out of some search for glory or your kind of typical stage-mom type of scenario, but I think more because she's like, "You can do this.

You're made to do this.

You're a natural communicator.

That's what you are.

This is what you should do.

And don't be shy about putting yourself out there."

And, you know, it's not an accident my mother is American.

My father is British.

Of course, my British side is like, "Oh, don't be ridiculous.

Keep your head down.

You know, don't volunteer yourself.

Don't get above your station."

Like that is very much the kind of British side of me, which you can hear from the accent, like, is part of me.

Franklin: You must also have a very strong stomach, I have to say.

When I read what you've seen, what you've been through, I kept thinking, "My goodness, I don't know if I could handle..." Ward: Um, I mean, I think you realize also when you read the book that I couldn't always handle it.

And I did have some really dark moments.

And I think that I was just so excited and so curious that I was willing to put up with this all sort of encompassing sense of real fear.

A lot of people think I'm fearless, like, absolutely not.

I'm incredibly fearful.

It's just that my desire to tell the story supersedes the fear.

[Explosions] "You're alright.

You're alright."

And as you get more experience, you also understand that fear is actually important.

It instructs us, it helps us evolutionarily; it has a very important function.

The key is not allowing fear to be in the driver's seat, because fear and panic are bedfellows.

Panic will get you killed in a war zone.

And so it's about adapting the discipline mentally of learning to like, acknowledge the fear, and then turn down the volume on it and be very focused on doing what you're doing in the most methodical, sensible, safe way that you can.

Franklin: I was also struck in your book by something you talk about that I've experienced as well when I went to Iran.

And that is to be a female in certain countries and Muslim countries is absolutely an asset, in my estimation.

It was for me, and I know it was for you.

Because you have entrée, and talking to half the population… Ward: Mmmm.

Franklin: ….that a male reporter might not have.

Or another man might need to be sitting there at the same time that he was interviewing a woman.

Ward: A hundred percent.

People get this all upside down.

They're like, "Oh, isn't it difficult to do this job as a woman?"

I'm like, "No, it's easier.

And I feel safer."

Because as a woman, we're not necessarily viewed with the same level of suspicion per se.

We're not seen as mercenaries or soldiers or fighters or spies, traditionally.

I forget who it was used to joke to me, "It's a wonderful thing sometimes to be underestimated."

And I have found that again and again and again.

Being a woman has allowed me to sit in all sorts of spaces, to be privy to all sorts of conversations, and to get to places that often my male colleagues just have not been able to get to because they are seen as being more of a threat.

Franklin: Now, you are also very honest about how trauma… Ward: Mmm.

Franklin: …eventually affected you.

And the need to get help, although help on your own terms, because there was somebody else who tried to… Ward: Oh, yeah.

Yeah.

Franklin: …tried to surreptitiously get you help.

Ward: Yeah.

I say this to young reporters all the time, "The check is coming.

It will come.

You don't get to do this job for 20 years and you never get the check."

Meaning that when you go and experience a trauma, or you go through a traumatic situation, you don't necessarily process it in that moment.

You might come out of it and feel pretty much nothing.

You're fine.

"I'm alive.

Woo hoo, we survived.

Great, move on."

But after you do it for 10 years, it's building up in there somewhere.

And at a certain time you will pay for it, right?

And it's much easier if you are aware of it from an early stage, even if you are not already feeling it.

You are more proactive about self-care.

You are more open to therapy or whatever it may be that helps you process some of that emotion.

Because if you don't deal with it, if you try to ignore it and bury it and bury it, as war correspondents traditionally have done, it will usually blow up at some point.

Franklin: How has faith, or how did faith eventually come into the picture – religion… Ward: Mmm.

Franklin: …and help?

Ward: Mmm.

So for me, the great thing about prayer is that you sort of surrender everything you're seeing and experiencing and you kind of hand it over to a higher being.

Because the real struggle for me was in this constant thing of, "Why can't I make the world better?

Why can't I end this war?

Why doesn't this report result in some action that will help these people?

Why am I failing?

Why -- maybe if I take more risks, my work will be even better, even more powerful.

How can I allow myself to live a normal life when I leave these places?

I should be there all the time.

I should never stop.

I should be doing more, more."

You know, it's endless.

It's exhausting.

And ultimately, it's kind of hilarious.

Because you're just talking about little old me, right?

We attribute so much power to ourselves that in the cosmic scheme of things is a little absurd.

And that doesn't mean that we don't all do our best to be the best at what we do.

But for me, being able to surrender to a higher being without necessarily even having to put a label on what that looks like or what the construct is for doing that, and having prayer and having the humility that comes with that, is such a beautiful lifting of such a heavy burden.

Franklin: Well said.

I'm curious to know if your necklaces are important to you.

Ward: Yes, they are.

This is an ancient coin from Damascus that my husband, knowing how much I love Syria, um, had made into a beautiful necklace for me.

And then this is a necklace for my three, my three sons, with their names and these little symbols.

One is the sun, one is a honeybee and one is a rabbit.

So I wear them always.

They're very precious to me and they keep me grounded.

Franklin: How did becoming a mother change, let's just say your willingness to go into some of the zones that you had gone into before?

I know you kept going even when you were pregnant… Ward: Yeah.

Franklin…you know, it didn't stop you, and you made sure that it didn't.

But it certainly must give you pause.

Ward: It definitely gives me pause in the sense of there's risks that I'm not willing to take.

Um, and I will be much more calculated about when I will take a certain risk.

It has to be a really, really important story, or a story that I really feel can deliver a big impact in some way to justify taking a very high risk.

My primary focus and responsibility in life is midwifing these young souls into this world.

And that's my everything.

At the same time, to be the best mother that I can be, I need to continue to do my work, 'cause it's such an essential part of me, and it's how I fill the tank, and it's how, how, how I learn about the world, how I understand the world, and, and, and it makes me a better, more loving mother.

And it makes me a better journalist.

Franklin: I was going to say, it makes you a better journalist, because it gives you entree to other mothers in a way that they -- it gives you a way to connect with other mothers.

Ward: A hundred percent, it has changed the way I report on stories.

I'm much more willing to lean into the emotion of a moment, the tragedy of a moment.

I'm not trying to sanitize or sugarcoat anything.

I want to be in there with the mothers, with the civilians, showing the horrors of war.

Um, and I feel that I'm emotionally much more porous for being a mother myself.

Franklin: As part of the education of a journalist, you say that it was important to have a near-death experience.

Ward: Mmm.

Franklin: It was humbling.

It keeps you sharp, really.

Ward: It keeps you sharp, and it also makes you realize like, this isn't a game.

When you start out, you think that war correspondence is so glamorous; how we fetishize it as a society when you look at Hollywood and books and the war correspondent is this swashbuckling adventure and war zones as being these incredibly exciting, dramatic….

Okay, there's an element of that, but war is hell.

War is horror, death is real, death is final.

This isn't a game, and you're not starring in some lame movie about yourself.

You know, this is, this is other people's lives being shattered.

And it's a huge responsibility, which is not to say that we don't have moments of levity and joking around, because frankly otherwise you'd never be able to do it; it'd be just too miserable.

But to have an appreciation for the danger and the reality and the finality of death is like, I think, really essential to being able to do this properly.

Franklin: War is very real.

Death is very real.

But we have fake news now.

Ward: Mmm.

Franklin: I mean, we have scenes that are kluged onto other scenes, that are faked.

Now AI has come in.

How concerned are you as a journalist about us being in a "post-truth" era, I guess would be the way to describe it?

Ward: Yeah, we're already there.

And it's very frightening.

And it's very serious.

It's existential.

When a society -- and this is something that Hannah Arendt wrote about -- when a society stops believing in the idea of truth, the idea that truth exists, that we can all agree that this is a mug.

It's not a vase of flowers, it's a mug.

And when you're bombarded with lies and fake news and you know, you know, duplicitous images and misinformation and disinformation, your temptation is to be like, "I'm overwhelmed.

I throw my hands up and I say that I don't even know if truth exists anymore."

And that is a dangerous inflection point for any society.

Now, we can sit there and moan about it all day and talk about how awful it is.

Or, as journalists, we can try to meet the moment and stand up to the task and be transparent about our failings and be transparent about our limitations, but also be a rallying cry for, "Okay, there may be biases that exist here, but we still believe in facts.

We still have ethics.

We still have integrity.

We still work so hard to make sure that we are doing everything in our power to deliver you the closest approximation of the truth that is out there."

And then it's your job as a viewer, as a consumer, reader, to watch this, watch that, read that, and kind of make your own decisions about how you view any given situation.

What worries me is that so many people, especially younger people, they're not consuming news from a television or a newspaper.

They're getting it online.

They're probably getting it on social media.

They're living in their echo chamber.

The algorithm is constantly feeding them material that is going to make them feel outraged 24 hours a day.

And more worryingly, which allows them to live in these siloed echo chambers where they are not having to sit with complexity, where they're not having to listen to the other side of things, to a diversity of voices.

I mean, the irony is we've become such champions of diversity, which is a great thing.

And yet we are less comfortable than other listening to other people's voices.

How does that make sense?

We need to be able to sit with complexity.

We need to be able to listen to people who we fundamentally disagree with.

The act of listening and the act of getting out of our echo chambers is really crucial to keep this fabric of society intact.

Franklin: Do you think you have another book in you?

Did you enjoy writing it enough that you might want to write another book?

Ward: I do, but not for, not in the near term.

I have three small children, a totally insane job.

And the discipline and time that it takes and the solitude that you need to really write something that's worthwhile; um, I think you feel when the moment is right.

And the moment is not right for me now.

Franklin: Well, when you do, I will look forward very much to reading it, as I did reading this memoir of yours.

And thank you for spending so much time with us today.

Really appreciate it.

I know how busy you are.

Ward: Thank you.

I've enjoyed our conversation so much.

Franklin: You've been listening to Clarissa Ward, the chief international correspondent for CNN.

Our conversation was taped at the 2024 Sun Valley Writers' Conference.

My thanks to the conference organizers for inviting us back for our 17th year of interviews.

You can watch this conversation again or any of the others by going to the "Conversations from the Sun Valley Writers' Conference" playlist on YouTube.

You'll also find them on your favorite podcast platform.

Thanks so much for joining us.

[Music] Announcer: Major funding is provided by the Idaho Public Television Endowment and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting.