Veteran CNN International anchor Christiane Amanpour announced Monday she’s leaving the network next summer after more than four decades at the network.
“After more than 43 years at CNN, Christiane has decided that the time is right to begin a new chapter,” CNN CEO Mark Thompson told staffers in a memo. “Early in 2027, she will scale back her CNN International show, ‘Amanpour,’ to once a week. The program will conclude in May, and she will leave CNN at the end of June.”
“Christiane has thought carefully about this decision, and she and I have been discussing it for some months. Like so many CNNers who will hear the news today, I’m very sorry to see her go, but I’ve come to accept that this is the right time for her, both personally and professionally,” Thompson wrote.
Amanpour thanked her viewers and alluded to the “pressures” she and her CNN colleagues face during an on-air address.
“Now, you know I’ve always been fiercely independent, and I will continue to be that for you for as long as I am here and beyond,” Amanpour said. “That’s especially important today as we face unprecedented pressures from all sides, political, financial and also from the rising dangers in the field. I’ll always be rooting for CNN maintaining its history of independent journalism.”
“Remember: always be truthful, not neutral,” she also said in a written statement.
The announcement came as a shock to CNN staffers. One called her CNN’s “reigning titan.” Another described themselves as a “Christiane loyalist” and called her “the heart and soul of this company,” but admitted her stature in journalism can continue without CNN.
“She has the power to chart her own course. Yes, she is synonymous with a brand, but she is also a bigger than the brand,” the CNN staffer told Fox News Digital.
While the 68-year-old journalist is revered among her CNN colleagues and members of the liberal media, she has her critics as well. As she referenced in her statement, Amanpour rejects the notion of neutrality when it comes to reporting, insisting the truth should remain the north star.
“Both-siderism — on the one hand, on the other hand — is not always objectivity. It does not get you to the truth,” Amanpour told graduates at the Columbia Journalism School in 2023. “Drawing false, moral or factual equivalence is neither objective or truthful. Objectivity is our golden rule. And it is in weighing all the sides and all the evidence hearing everyone reporting everything, but not rushing to equate them when there is no equating and look at the damage that that has done in the climate debate, in the political arena and in the field of battle.”
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Her coverage of the Israel-Hamas war and her past commentary have also raised eyebrows. Amanpour claimed in October 2023, just weeks after the terrorist attack on Israel, “the rest of the world” agreed with Jordanian Queen Rania Al Abdullah’s complaint that the Western world shows more support for Israel than the Palestinians. She also reported that third-party negotiators were trying to implement a “hostage release on both sides,” implying Israel, too, is keeping civilian hostages and not just the Hamas terrorists. Earlier in the year, she was forced to apologize after she claimed the murder of an Israeli rabbi’s family was the result of a “shootout.”
In November 2020, she was condemned by the Israeli government and the Anti-Defamation League for comparing the Trump presidency to Kristallnacht, known as the “Night of Broken Glass” when Nazis terrorized Jews throughout Germany and Austria, resulting in at least 91 deaths and 7,500 Jewish businesses vandalized during the Holocaust. Amanpour walked back her comments following the intense backlash.
Amanpour’s forthcoming exit from CNN marks the first major journalist set to leave the network under its new corporate ownership. Skydance CEO and Paramount owner David Ellison recently closed on his $111 billion purchase of Warner Bros. Discovery, merging two legacy Hollywood studios as well as several television networks including CNN and CBS under Skydance.
While there’s been no indication her decision was tied to Ellison’s takeover of the network, Amanpour isn’t shy to publicly challenge her bosses, most notably Thompson’s predecessor Chris Licht, for airing the now-infamous Trump town hall in 2023. Earlier this year, Amanpour expressed concern about Ellison owning CNN over how he’s handled CBS News since he bought Paramount and installed Bari Weiss as its editor-in-chief.
“I’m concerned based on what’s happened to the other things that he’s taken over already, like CBS News, right?” Amanpour said in May. “I mean, do I have to list what’s happening there? I mean, hemorrhaging viewers, probably hemorrhaging money, this ideological realignment of CBS and the destruction, potentially, of ‘60 Minutes.’”