On Sunday August 1, longtime CNN international correspondent Christiane Amanpour will take over as host of ABC's
This Week, replacing ex-Clinton operative George Stephanopoulos. Amanpour, who is
married to Jamie Rubin, Assistant Secretary of
State for public affairs during the Clinton administration and an
adviser in 2007-08 for Hillary Clinton's
presidential campaign.
A look through the
MRC's Notable Quotables archive confirms her
standard liberal outlook on the world:
■ She told
Hillary
Clinton “a lot of the women that I meet from traveling overseas are very
impressed by you and admire your dignity.”
■ Scolded Mikhail Gorbachev by
raising how he's been “criticized heavily by those who say you opened a
pandora's box.”
■ Argued the press was “muzzled” and not tough enough
on President George W. Bush.
■ Warned of scary “totalitarian”
Christians.
■ Quite oddly juxtaposed French President Nicolas
Sarkozy's criticism of rioters with his welcoming of Barack Obama.
■ Plus,
she justified awarding President Obama the Nobel Peace Prize: “He’s
obviously done something very significant” since the U.S. now has a “new
relationship with the rest of the world.”
Nonetheless,
last year she insisted: “Nobody knows my biases.”
Below are the most biased quotes from Amanpour's reporting, starting in 1999:
Hillary’s
Dignity, or Dependency?
“A lot of the women that I meet from
traveling overseas are very impressed by you and admire your dignity. A
lot of the people you meet are people who suffered, people you saw
today, and who believe that they identify with you, because they have
seen you suffer. And in a speech in Africa last year, you spoke about
living for hope and reconciliation, living for forgiveness and
reconstruction, and living for a new life — have you been able to apply
that to your own circumstances? Have you been able to forgive your
husband?”
— CNN’s Christine Amanpour to Hillary Clinton in
Macedonia after a tour of refugee camps, May 14, 1999.Gorby
Blamed for Berlin Wall Fall
Christiane Amanpour: “Indeed,
ten years later, many are saying the unbridled capitalism that followed
communism has unleashed misery on citizens who had all their social
needs taken care of, especially in the former Soviet Union.”
To
Mikhail Gorbachev: “Mr. President, you are regarded by many people
in this world as a hero for causing the end of tyranny and the collapse
of communism. But you are also criticized heavily by those who say you
opened a Pandora's box. And they say look at the strife now, look at the
economic chaos, look at the Mafia structure, look at the corruption.
They say that you opened and started a plan that you did not know how to
finish.”
— CNN's The World Today, November 8, 1999. [Audio/video (0:51): Windows Media | MP3 audio]
Elian,
Learn Ballet on the Farm!
“Like these young dancers, Carlos
[Acosta] benefited from Cuba’s communist system because it not only
recognizes physical talent, it nurtures it, whether it’s baseball,
boxing, or ballet.”
— CBS 60 Minutes correspondent Christiane
Amanpour on a star of London’s Royal Ballet, May 21, 2000. Reporters
Too Pro-Bush
“I think the press was
muzzled,
and I think the press self-muzzled. I’m sorry to say, but certainly
television and, perhaps, to a certain extent, my station was intimidated
by the administration and its foot soldiers at Fox News. And it did, in
fact, put a climate of fear and self-censorship, in my view, in terms
of the kind of broadcast work we did....The entire body politic...did
not ask enough questions, for instance, about weapons of mass
destruction. I mean, it looks like this was disinformation at the
highest levels.”
–
CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on CNBC’s Topic A with
Tina Brown, September 10, 2003.
The Weasels Were Right
“Do
you feel vindicated when you look at what Iraq is going through right
now?”
— CNN’s Christiane Amanpour to French Prime Minister Dominique
de Villepin, Anderson Cooper 360, Nov. 29, 2005.Reporters Pay
for Iraq 'Disaster'
“The war in Iraq has basically
turned out to be a disaster, and journalists have paid for it, paid for
the privilege of witnessing and reporting that....By any indicator, Iraq
is a black hole....Whether you take the number of journalists killed or
wounded, whether you take the number of American soldiers killed or
wounded, whether you take the number of Iraqi soldiers killed and
wounded, contractors, people working there, it just gets worse and
worse.”
— CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Larry King Live, January 30,
2006 discussing the bomb attack that wounded ABC co-anchor Bob Woodruff
and cameraman Doug Vogt. [Audio/video (0:28): Windows Media | MP3
audio]Scary 'Totalitarian' Christians
“On
[Christian youth activist Ron Luce’s Honor Academy] campus, students
must follow a strict set of rules: No secular music or television. No
R-rated movies. No alcohol. No drugs. No dating. [To Luce] When I, you
know, read that women have to wear skirts of a certain length and guys
aren’t allowed to, you know, go on the Internet unsupervised, I mean, I
think, you know, totalitarian regimes.”
— Correspondent Christiane
Amanpour in her August 23, 2007 profile of "Christian Warriors," the
last of CNN’s 3-part special on "God’s Warriors."Insulting
Rioters = Insulting Obama
“The black people
in France are very proud and very hopeful for their future. They also
live, many of them, in poor situations. And you know, you’ve had your
own riots here and protests and disturbances in the Banlieue — in the
city. At one point, when we were covering those riots, when you were
Interior Minister, you called the rioters ‘scum.’ And I’m wondering
whether you feel, today, when you stand next to someone you clearly
admire so much, and who has broken so many barriers, that you regret
that term or that you wish you hadn’t said it?”
— CNN correspondent
Christiane Amanpour to French President Nicolas Sarkozy during a July
25, 2008 press conference with Barack Obama shown live on CNN. [Audio/video (0:51): Windows Media | MP3 audio]Amanpour:
My Biases Are a Complete Mystery
“I ask people just to look at
my body of work. And nobody knows my biases. Do they think I’m against?
Do they think I’m for? They don’t know my biases. They don’t know where I
come from in this. I just try very hard to report the facts and to tell
the stories as best as I can. I am not part of the current crop of
opinion journalists or commentary journalists or feelings journalists. I
strongly believe that I have to remain in the realm of fact.”
—
CNN’s Christiane Amanpour to CBS’s Lesley Stahl in a June 23, 2009
“Women on the Web” interview.Criticism of
Obama's Nobel Peace Prize 'Overdone'
“Can I
just say, I think it’s overdone,
this pushing back against his award. He’s obviously done something very
significant, and that is, after eight years in which the United States
was really held in contempt around the world, the United States has now
had a new relationship with the rest of the world.”
– Christiane
Amanpour, reacting to criticism of President Obama being awarded the
Nobel Peace Prize, December 10, 2009 American Morning on CNN. [Audio/video (0:44): Windows Media | MP3 audio]
Saluting 'Most Powerful and Successful' Pelosi
“You, by all accounts, are one of the most, if not the most, powerful and successful Speakers in the history of the United States. You’ve passed so much legislation. The President was elected with a significant majority. You had control of both houses of Congress. And yet, now, people are talking about you might lose your majority in the House. The gap seems to be growing wider between what’s achieved and what’s making an impact with the people. How did this happen?”
— New ABC host Christiane Amanpour to Speaker Nancy Pelosi on This Week, August 1, 2010.