HKS COMMENCEMENT SPECIAL EDITION Award-winning international journalist and interviewer Christiane Amanpour developed her philosophy of journalism—which favors the pursuit of objective truth over neutrality—while covering events like the bloody siege of Sarajevo and Serbian ethnic cleansing in Bosnia. “People don't understand that objectivity actually means pursuing the truth,” she says. “But you get there by giving all sides a hearing, which doesn't mean treating all sides equally—then you are an accomplice in these extreme situations.” She also says that good journalism and democracy are inextricably linked, and that journalists and the public must speak out when either are threatened. Amanpour was this year’s Class Day speaker at the Harvard Kennedy School Commencement, arriving at the University at a tumultuous time, as the Trump administration has attacked both Harvard and major news organizations in ways she says echo authoritarian regimes she’s covered over the years. The daughter of an Iranian father and British mother, she was raised in Tehran until age 11 and finished her secondary education in British boarding schools before moving to the United States. She started as a lowly desk assistant at CNN in 1983, when she was fresh out of the University of Rhode Island’s journalism program and the network was basically a 3-year-old startup still trying to sell viewers and TV executives on the idea of a 24-hour news channel. She got her first big break covering the Iran-Iraq war, and through her reporting on everything from the fall of communism in Europe to the Persian Gulf War to the war in Bosnia, she basically became the de-facto face of CNN’s international coverage. Now based in London, she hosts the nightly shows “Amanpour” on CNN International and “Amanpour & Company” on PBS. She took some time out of her busy Class Day speaker schedule to share some thoughts on journalism and democracy with PolicyCast host Ralph Ranalli.