CNN chief international correspondent Christiane Amanpour will launch a new series in March called “Sex & Love Around the World,” as the veteran journalist “explores the intimate lives of women across the globe.”
Amanpour, who has been with the network for 35 years, explains that the “the idea came to [her] in the bathroom.”
“Getting ready for work, listening to a radio report about Syrian refugees fleeing to a pop-up camp on the border, a question flashed into my mind: How do they maintain family life, marriage, sexual relations, love, intimacy, privacy in their flimsy tents and metal containers?” Amanpour says in a CNN piece published Wednesday, on Valentine’s Day. “Why have I never explored that in my 27 years reporting war and crises around the world?”
“Sex and love is not something I usually talk about,” the London-born journalist noted, “but that thought sent me on an odyssey into life’s most essential question, trying to discover what makes us all human even in the most extreme conditions.”
{mosads}”From Berlin to Beirut, Tokyo to New Delhi, Accra to Shanghai, everywhere I looked I found people seeking — and craving — love, intimacy and sexual fulfillment,” she continues. “My quest took me to women and girls, who we so often dismiss as only victims of our patriarchal, misogynistic, hypersexualized culture, who were boldly seizing every opportunity for satisfaction and personal pleasure. I also found their evil downside: sexless marriages, industrial-scale infidelity and loneliness.”
Amanpour, 60, has won several prestigious journalism awards, including several Emmys and two Peabodys.
CNN has ventured into more taped programming, including documentaries on various decades, from the ’60s to the ’90s, and series such as the popular “Anthony Bourdain: Parts Unknown” under President Jeff Zucker, who began reshaping the network after taking the helm in 2013.
“Christiane Amanpour: Sex & Love Around the World” premieres Saturday, March 17, at 10 p.m.