Poynter: Ann Curry, Curiosity as Common Ground: Finding Humanity in Challenging Conversations

A recording of the event can be found here: Recording: Curiosity as Common Ground: Finding Humanity in Challenging Conversations

Examine how humanity and ethics in journalism can help us engage with one another despite differing perspectives, backgrounds, and beliefs. Through storytelling and discussion, the conversation will foster a sense of curiosity and open-mindedness, leading to meaningful interactions in the classroom, at the dinner table, and beyond. Facilitated by Kimberly Goff-Crews, secretary and vice president of university life at Yale. Co-organized by the Poynter Fellowship in Journalism and Cultivating Conversation.  

Ann Curry, is an award-winning journalist.  A former NBC Network news anchor and national and international correspondent, she has reported from conflicts in Syria, Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Darfur, Congo, the Central African Republic, Kosovo, Serbia, Lebanon, and Israel; on nuclear tensions from North Korea and Iran and from numerous humanitarian disasters, including the tsunamis in Southeast Asia and Japan, floods in Pakistan, and the massive 2010 earthquake in Haiti, where her appeal via Twitter/X (@AnnCurry) is credited for helping to speed the arrival of humanitarian planes.
 
She contributed groundbreaking journalism on Climate Change when it was being denied, interviewing scientists and indigenous people documenting glacial melt in the Arctic, the Antarctic (where she spent time inside an expedition hut left by Shackleton) and on Mount Kilimanjaro, as well as documenting the deepening drought in the American West.  She is also known for her focused reporting from inside Iran, amplifying the voices of women, human rights activists and young people, including Green Revolution activists.  She first broke the news of Iran's interest in negotiating a nuclear agreement with the outside world.
 
For her stories Ann has also traveled to the South Pole, (from where she delivered the first live news report from there to an American audience,) South Africa and Botswana, (where she tracked the Aids epidemic,) Somalia and Kenya, (where she documented Al Qaeda's link to Al Shabaab terrorists,) as well to Chad, Liberia and Pakistan, among other places.
 
Ann has conducted a long list of exclusive and news breaking interviews, which have included Iran's President Hassan Rouhani, President Ahmadinejad, President Khatami and Foreign Minister Zarif; Syria's President Bashar al-Assad and First Lady Asma al-Assad; Pakistan's Benazir Bhutto, President Ali Zadari and President Musharraf; Turkey's President Erdogan; Sudan's President Omar Bashir and South Sudan's President Salva Kiir; Liberia's President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf; Chad's President Idriss Deby; as well as U.S. Presidents George Prescott Bush, Bill Clinton, George Walker Bush and Barack Obama, as well as Vice-President Joe Biden  and Jill Biden, Secretaries of State John Kerry and Hillary Clinton and First Lady Laura Bush, the Dalai Lama, Sir Edmund Hillary, George Clooney, Maya Angelou, Angelina Jolie, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Ukraine’s First Lady Olena Zelenska, and Russia’s opposition activist Yulia Navalnaya, among others.
 
Ann has also executed produced and reported a documentary series with PBS connecting people affected by world events named, “We’ll Meet Again,” and a medical series with Lionsgate, connecting specialists worldwide with underinsured Americans named “Chasing the Cure.”
 
She was given the Edward R. Murrow Lifetime Achievement in Journalism award in 2022.  She has 7 national news Emmys for her reporting along, with numerous Murrow, Gracie, National Headliner and Webby Awards.  The NAACP has honored her an Excellence in Reporting award.  Women in Communications has awarded her a Matrix.  
 
Ann has also been given numerous humanitarian awards, including from Refugees International, Americares, Save the Children, the Muhammad Ali Center, and a Medal of Valor from The Simon Wiesenthal Center, for her dedication to reporting about genocide.
 
Ann has been Poynter Fellow at Yale and a Sine Fellow at American University and is currently a Trumbull Associate Fellow.
 
She also works with humanitarian organizations, is a UNHCR High Profile Supporter, contributes to documeentaries, and is writing a memoir.