'I just need to know these people are OK': CNN's Nima Elbagir on frontline reporting

*Originally published on November 25, 2021.

CNN's Senior International correspondent Nima Elbagir remembers a moment walking through the airport in Amman, Jordan when a man with a long beard, holding a young girl's hand, approached her. 

"I just thought, 'Oh God, what have I done? Which story am I going to get roundly told off for?'" she told Nahlah Ayed, host of CBC Radio's IDEAS. 

After greeting Elbagir in Arabic, the man said he wanted to introduce his daughter. She wanted to be a journalist and he'd read that Elbagir was a practicing Muslim. "And I said, 'Yes, I am.' And he said, 'I just wanted her to know that you can do this job and you don't have to peel off layers of who you are,'" said Elbagir.

"It was just another reminder for me that just merely existing, merely being a CNN correspondent, is probably the most important thing I do." 

Elbagir spoke to IDEAS following her 2021 Peter Stursberg Foreign Correspondents Lecture, entitled Humanity and the Foreign Correspondent. Hosted by Carleton University's School of Journalism and Communication, and in partnership with the Canadian War Museum, the annual lecture series showcases the most influential foreign correspondents working today.

'Holding on to your humanity'

Nima Elbagir, who was born in Sudan, started her career in 2002 at Reuters. She joined CNN in 2011 as a reporter in the network's Johannesburg bureau, before moving to Nairobi, then to London, where she is now based. Her work has been recognized with a raft of awards, including a George Polk award for foreign television reporting and a prestigious Peabody Award. 

She has reported on some of the biggest stories coming out of Africa, from the kidnapping of more than 250 schoolgirls from the Nigerian village of Chibok, to the Ebola outbreak in West Africa. 

In the lecture, Elbagir said she grew up believing "that what we do as journalists is not only necessary, but that it's a privilege." 

"As I got older, I realized it is also, of course, a job. So how do you do that job, fulfilling your ethical and professional obligations, while also holding on to your humanity?" 

Elbagir explored that question by sharing stories and video clips from her decade-long career at CNN. 

The clips Elbagir played ranged from an exposé into a modern-day slave auction in Libya to her confrontation with a Catholic priest convicted of pedophilic abuse, running a charity in the Central African Republic.

She also highlighted a moment covering the famine in Somalia in 2011 with fellow CNN correspondent Anderson Cooper.

Cooper and Elbagir met a couple in a children's hospital whose son had just died. Translating for Cooper, Elbagir explained the couple didn't have enough money to bury their son, and that they'd try to solicit funds from the community. Otherwise, they'd have no way to bury him.

In her lecture, Elbagir said Cooper proceeded to give her $200 and asked her to give it to the parents. That evening, on-air, he told his audience what they'd  done. 

"He said it was the human thing to do," Elbagir explained in her lecture. "And yet, I don't know if I can honestly say that I would have done the same if he hadn't been there. Often, we get so paralyzed with our own interpretations of some unwritten rule."

Elbagir said Cooper taught her "what we owe our audiences is our honesty, not our humanity."

As to the fine line between the ethics of journalism and the ethics of being a good person, Elbagir said there are some important differences.

"The ethics of journalism doesn't demand that we try and stay in touch with the people whose stories we tell," said Elbagir. 

Yet she does. 

It makes for better journalism, she says, "because the audience knows when you have an emotional attachment to the story that you're telling." 

It also reflects her upbringing. 

"Maybe it's because I'm from a country where reporters used to parachute into, and then parachute out of. And I, right from the beginning of my career, had to live in the community that I was reporting on, and live with the consequences that my reporting had for the community," said Elbagir. 

"And so the lesson that I took away was... I just need to know that these people are okay."  
 

Watch Nima Elbagir's Peter Stursberg lecture and a Q&A with IDEAS host Nahlah Ayed

* This episode was produced by Melissa Gismondi.