CNN chief international correspondent Clarissa Ward attends the conversation as part of Warner Bros. Discovery WBD at Cannes Lions on June 23, 2022 in Cannes, France. Ward has been on the frontlines of foreign reporting lately, in multiple ways. Arnold Jerocki/Getty Images for Warner Bros. Discovery What’s more scary than being a lead international correspondent at a time of multiple brutal wars and violent online rhetoric? Being a lead international correspondent when the whole future of your network is entering uncertain ownership hands. As CNN‘s chief international correspondent, Clarissa Ward may have one of the best jobs in all of media. But she also has one of the most fraught jobs in all of media. Dodging explosions in Ukraine, seeking an entree into Gaza, reporting from the Spanish-run city of Ceuta as migrants come pouring in from Morocco — Ward has been in every hotspot and then some recently. And all this before David Ellison got final approval to buy CNN along with the other assets of Warner Bros. Discovery. The Hollywood Reporter met the London-based Ward last week at a midtown Manhattan hotel on a rare recent trip to New York (she was here to see her bosses and meet with the president of Latvia, as one does). Not even 24 hours had passed since California attorney general Rob Bonta and other states settled their case against Ellison, clearing the way for him to own the cable-news giant. She had a few things to say about all of it. First, how are you feeling? About the state of the world but also the state of the news world. Oh it’s all great [laughs sarcastically]. No, I think I’m feeling really good about journalism. It’s hard, but there’s so much great work everywhere. As for the world… One of your biggest crusades has been about a place you can’t report from — Gaza. Are there signs that the Israeli government is changing its stance and will journalists have more access, as you and others have been pushing for? There’s a massive amount of pressure but not really. And we need to. What you can get now just isn’t enough. I don’t want wide shots of rubble — I want an old man in a chair telling me his story. And also I can’t report with the same moral authority if I’m not there. No one can. So that really needs to change.
Iran seems to pose similar challenges right now.
Totally. We mostly hear what the U.S. or Iran want us to hear, and the people of Iran lose when that happens. Everyone loses when that happens. There’s of course the fear that even if you get in to those places there’s a limit to what we can trust because a lot of Palestinians are still so afraid of Hamas and a lot of Iranians still so afraid of the regime. Does that concern you? Absolutely. In every conflict there’s self-censoring but in these two it’s worse in many ways .
As we’re speaking there’s another kind of censoring effort going on right here in the U.S., with Trump banning CNN, MS Now and Politico from the White House. How is that landing with you? It’s very concerning. But I think it’s also very encouraging to see the solidarity — look at what Fox News just did [in joining the other networks’ pool boycott]. Media companies realize a threat against some of us is a threat against all of us, even if they don’t agree on much else. What’s one place you’d like to be able to report from that you haven’t been allowed into recently? Sudan. It’s extremely hard, and Darfur is even harder. And the country [in the midst of a brutal 3+ year civil war] is in major crisis. What’s one place or story you have recently reported on that we’re not paying enough attention to? The migrant crisis in Europe. Being in Ceuta and seeing the migrants streaming across the border — this is part of a phenomenon that is going to change so much. Look at what just happened with AfD in Germany [winning an election in Saxony-Anhalt] and how the migrant crisis plays into it. It’s affecting everything. You’ve tried to mix things up on social media lately, talking about journalism while having tea in your kitchen or pastries in an airport or just dancing through a train station to “Shake Your Groove Thing.” It’s a bit of a different path from what you and frankly many foreign correspondents have previously taken. At the beginning people were saying ‘this is weird’ and ‘what are you doing?’ But I feel we have to meet viewers where they are. Some institutions have become a little bit [pauses]…formal in how they report the news. [Lowers her voice to faux-seriousness for the next phrase] ‘Over these hills behind me, you can see’ — I mean, nobody talks like that anymore. Content creators talk the way viewers themselves talk. [Laughs] No certainly not, though there are some who say foreign correspondents should keep that formal tradition alive. And I get that. I wouldn’t do it if I was, say, reporting from Syria. We have to be careful not to cross any lines. But also I think it’s OK to ask ‘what if we tried something on for size, in the right context?’ ‘What if it feels looser, more like you’re listening to a friend?’ People don’t want to feel like they’re being bullshitted — young people especially but everybody. So I’m trying to do something so they don’t feel that way. Some people will see these videos and also wonder if you’re planning on a post-correspondent life. A few of your CNN colleagues have certainly had success outside the machine — Jim Acosta, Don Lemon. Is that something you can see yourself doing? They’ve done great but I’ve always loved being in the field, being out there reporting, and to do that [for broadcast] you really need an institution like CNN behind you. But nowadays you’d be unwise not to look at other things. I’m not going to pretend I know what that is [at this point]. But you have to look. A lot of tongues wagged when back in the spring you signed only a one-year contract instead of a long-term one. Was that a signal you may be preparing for an eventual life outside CNN, especially with a new owner coming in? There are so many things going on and you don’t want to rush into anything without a clear-eyed view in terms of how much is changing. So that’s where that was coming from. On the subject of that train video, you did get a clapback from the White House social media team, which derided you for doing it and called you a “hot mess,” among other lovely names. What was your reaction to that? I mean, we’re having fun. It’s social media. So much of content is people taking things out of boxes. It’s not like we were on CNN on the front page of the web site. I don’t know, I’m not sure why overt displays of joy make some people feel inadequate.
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