Christiane Amanpour Claims She’s ‘Never’ Heard Criticism That She’s Partisan

Photo by Richard Shotwell/Invision/AP

Veteran CNN anchor Christiane Amanpour has long argued journalists should seek out “truth” over “neutrality” — a direct approach to covering the news that sometimes ends with her being accused of partisanship. In a new interview, she said she’s never heard that criticism before.

Speaking with Oliver Darcy for his Status newsletter this week, Amanpour was asked what she makes of those who accuse her of bias. She replied: “To be honest Oliver, I never hear myself being called ‘partisan.’ I am not an American, I don’t cover U.S. elections or domestic politics. I tell the truth and the stories from around the world, including what everyone over here thinks of America at any given time.”

She added: “I’m sure there are a chorus of complainers on social media. But I don’t pay attention at all. My bars are ‘truthful not neutral’ and ‘get it right.'”

Amanpour has long defended how she approaches her work as principled, not partisan. Speaking at the 2024 Sir Harry Summit in London, she laid out her approach: “We are not impartial, and we should not be – we should be objective and truthful.”

She questioned whether impartiality meant neutrality, asking: “What if World War II was about to explode – would we say we’re impartial to the Nazis’ desire to overrun the world?” Instead, she framed truth as “empirical, evidentiary, and factual,” and rejected the idea that it could be subjective.

Amanpour has frequently positioned herself as an authority on truth in journalism — a frequent keynote speaker at top universities and international press summits like these, where she urges young journalists to hold the line against false equivalence and disinformation.

Critics, both conservative and centrist, hare argued that her framing too often aligns with a specific ideological lens. And they cite everything from her remarks on Trump to language on Middle East conflicts.

Mediaite founder Dan Abrams, in a monologue for his NewsNation show in 2023, accused Amanpour of “faking objectivity” when she used a Columbia Journalism School commencement address to criticize CNN’s Trump town hall by “bragging” she would have walked off stage when Trump called moderator Kaitlan Collins a “nasty person.”

“She has shown herself to be self-righteous and overtly liberal,” Abrams said.

He added that Amanpour has “plenty of amazing stories to tell from the field to a group of aspiring journalists” but that “faking objectivity while bragging to journalism students… is exactly why so many non-journalists despise what we do.”

Supporters of Israel are also frequent critics of Amanpour’s journalism. Jonathan S. Tobin, editor-in-chief of the Jewish News Syndicate, called out Amanpour in 2023 for what he argued was a long-standing bias against Israel.

Ad Fontes, a media watchdog group that analyzes media figures and outlets for partisan bias, gives Amanpour a score that “skews left” by 7 points on a scale of 0-42. (Fox News anchor Bret Baier, as a comparison, skews roughly the same amount to the right.) Another watchdog, AllSides, concurred with that analysis — finding that she “leans left.”