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American Jon Lee Anderson, 68, has accepted the invitation from the Prix Bayeux Calvados-Normandie for War Correspondents: this coming October the celebrated war reporter for The New Yorker – and author of the best-selling Che Guevara – will serve as President of the jury. A new experience for a lifelong adventurer…

A witness of the history of his time

As an avid reader of all kinds of biographies (and especially of contemporary explorers) Jon Lee became interested in adventure and exploration. Inspired and encouraged by his mother he soon developed an ambition to be a writer too. But not any kind of writer. “I wanted to be a witness of the history of my time.” Brought up on travel from his early childhood, aware of human conditions and naturally audacious, the blithe teenager began his quest. At first he was accompanied by contacts of his parents – he spent a week in rural Taiwan at nine years of age, hunting and fishing with one of his father’s employees, spent times in a ranch in Australia’s outback at 11 and 12, and at 13, joined an uncle and aunt who were geologists, living in Liberia – but soon took off on his own, travelling in the bush there and in East Africa. The continent of Africa was still in the throes of anti-colonial struggles, and he read the work of war correspondents, became more and more interested in politics and got a feel for journalism. Writer or war reporter? “The two had fused.” From Africa, Jon Lee soon went to South America, to Peru – where he got his first job reporting – and from there Central America and Nicaragua, where the Sandinistas were fighting against the Somoza dictatorship. As a young journalist he spent the next few years covering the various civil wars that were erupting in the region: Nicaragua, Guatemala, El Salvador, Grenada, Surinam…
He got to know and spend time with the guerrillas and some of their insurgent leaders, and to see how they lived and operated. “From that moment on, I began to understand war.” To understand but also to experience it. “I was shot at, I saw my first dead people, I felt the injustice, I was ambushed… Everything that can happen when you’re in the midst of a guerrilla war.”

A first book to understand the psychology of violence

Particularly interested in the condition of people who spend their lives at war and frustrated by not being able to dwell on this aspect of conflict in his articles, Jon Lee decided to write a book on the world of insurrection. Guerrillas: journeys in the insurgent world was published in 1992 after four years spent with insurgent groups in different parts of the world. “I returned to El Salvador, Palestine – particularly to Gaza – and I went to Afghanistan, Western Sahara and Burma. I spent time with fighters who were difficult and sometimes hostile. A few were psychopaths. Not everyone was open to outsiders. But most of them were people just like us, who, for various reasons had chosen to live their lives in resistance to what they saw as unfair or corrupt systems of government. I was trying to document their motivations, the way they lived, the ways they were creating a new society. I wanted to find answers to my questions and understand the psychology of violence. It was really the culmination of my lifelong quest to understand war.” He went on from this book to write a biography, of Che Guevara, which was a best-seller. “He was the incarnation, the personification of all these people I had been interested in.” The work was a kind of detective story. “And it was an opportunity to do something new and different.” He spent five years on the book before beginning what he describes as the “second part of his career ”.

Understanding war

A second part that began on 11 September 2001. “I felt I had to go back to Afghanistan because I knew the country.” Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Liberia, Mali, Lebanon… From one country to another, Jon Lee found answers to his questions. “Instead of becoming a naturalist – which I’d hoped to be as a child – I became someone who understood war. That doesn’t mean I approve of it, but I understand it. Going to war is the most terrible thing a man can do. And yet as terrible as it is, sometimes it becomes the only way for a society to survive. This is a reality of the story of humanity that has been going on for ever.” Jon Lee sometimes feels powerless in the face of events. “I can see conflicts develop and I know when they have reached the point of no return: it’s a terrible feeling to know that, at that moment, there is no other outcome but war.” Current events also mean the situation in his own country. As an American who has spent much of his life living outside of the United States, he has an outsider’s view of the current political situation: “I see the country as foreigners see it. But because of my nationality I feel I have to decode this “Trumpification” of American politics and try to help illuminate what’s going on and what we need to be aware of. ”
Jon Lee Anderson will be sharing his viewpoint on the United States and the world with his peers next October in Bayeux. A regular at the Prix who has already participated in the work of the jury, this time he will assume the mantle of President. In this he will succeed Clarissa Ward as well as two of his close colleagues and friends: Ed Vulliamy (2020) and Thomas Dworzak (2022).
The curious child, the teenager who was afraid of nothing (except mobs), the man who wanted to be a witness of the history of his time will have to decode and dissect the best in conflict journalism. “A tough task but a great honour.”

« How can you kill? How can you do that? As a boy I couldn’t understand how this could be. What also interested me was how societies dress up their wars with legal and even moral justifications. War is the most horrifying thing man does, and yet we have our bloodlettings and then often go back to being peaceful “civilised nations” again. This contradiction, this moral contradiction was at the root of my interest in war. »

SOME DATES

1986 Inside the League (with Scott Anderson)
1988 War Zones: Voices from the World’s Killing Grounds (with Scott Anderson)
1992 Guerrillas: journeys in the insurgent world, Times Books
1997 Che Guevara: a revolutionary life, Grove Press, New York Times Notable book of the year
1998Began working for The New Yorker, covering Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Iraq, Afghanistan, Angola, Somalia, Sudan, Mali, Liberia and Latin America
2003 The Lion’s Grave: dispatches from Afghanistan, Grove Press
2004 The Fall of Baghdad, Penguin Press
2020 Che, une vie révolutionnaire, Vuibert (graphic adaptation)
August 2025 To Lose a War: The Fall and Rise of the Taliban, Penguin Press

More than forty war correspondents have gathered in Bayeux on October 11^th and 12^th to debate and award seven trophies in the following categories: photo, print, radio, television, grand format television, young reporter (photo) and video image. Three honorary awards have been attributed: the Regional prize for students and trainees of Normandy (television), the Public’s Choice award (photo) and the Ouest-France – Jean Marin prize (print). Presided by Clarissa Ward, the international jury of the 31^st edition of the Bayeux Calvados-Normandy Award for war correspondents has reached its verdict…

“I was so impressed by the work that we were judging. So beautiful, bold, brave and vital… I wish we could award everyone. We had very important conversations in this room. The discussions and debates were also very illuminating for me: I learnt a lot from the perspectives and the different visions of my TV, radio, photo or print colleagues. It made me very proud to be a journalist. “
Clarissa Ward

The Anglo-American journalist Clarissa Ward has accepted the invitation from the Prix Bayeux-Calvados-Normandie for War Correspondents: next October the CNN star journalist will don the mantle of President of the international jury for the 31st edition of the event. At the age of 44, it is an“honour”and a “big responsibility” for one of the youngest Presidents in the history of the Prix Bayeux.

Meteoric rise

Having begun as an assistant on the night-time edition of Fox News, Clarissa quickly moved to ABC and then CBS News. Working for these major American networks she was based first in Moscow, Beijing and then London and travelled to many war zones. Among them Syria provided the opportunity for her earliest coup and first international recognition: while there she did an interview with two Western fighters who had gone there to wage jihad, and became the only Western journalist to have interviewed an American jihadi.  In 2015 she joined CNN and three years later succeeded Christiane Amanpour as Chief International Correspondent. In 2021 she was in Afghanistan when the Taliban regained power. In 2022 she covered the Russian invasion of Ukraine. Each time her reports on families in distress struck a chord with public opinion. Driven by “a fundamental curiosity about human nature” Clarissa Ward continued to pursue the mission she had set for herself more than twenty years earlier: “to shine a light on the experience of ordinary civilians living through extraordinary moments”.

Sensitivity

And Clarissa encountered many ordinary citizens. Very many. Enormous numbers of them. So many that she decided to write a book about them. On All Fronts: the Education of a Journalist, published in 2020, enabled her to share the “kindness, courage, resilience, altruism, bravery: you see extraordinary moments of kindness and selflessness that don’t generally make the front page of the papers, but need to be told”. Clarissa describes the book as a “memoir” that she also wrote for her children. As the mother of three young boys – “a second full-time job!” – the journalist firmly believes that her work will contribute to making her children “better citizens, better humans, open to the world and the way it works”. She explains that they in turn “have made her a better journalist, with a lot more compassion, viewing stories in a different way”. Having seen the worst of what humanity is capable of, she retains a degree of optimism. “I’ve seen the worst of humanity but also the best.”

A new role

Accustomed to ”going where the news takes her” Clarissa Ward will make an exception next October to spend a few days in Bayeux. A unique time and space that she sees as “the opportunity to immerse myself in some of the best journalism out there”. She feels honoured to take part in the deliberations for “one of the most prestigious and well-respected awards for conflict journalism” and is aware of her responsibilities: “Moderating the conversations around how we judge journalism, deconstructing stories, is a challenging process. What are the parameters for judging what is the best journalism? Is it about bravery? Is it about the story-telling? Is it about newsworthiness? Is it about impact? It’s not often that we have the opportunity to dig deep into what constitutes great journalism. I’m sure there’ll be some interesting debates: journalists love to debate!”

Following on from Christiane Amanpour

In addition to their origins (both were born in London) and their positions at CNN, Clarissa Ward and Christiane Amanpour will soon have another thing in common: having been President of the jury at the Prix Bayeux. In 2018 this small town in Calvados welcomed the American news channel’s star of current affairs.  In 2024 it will do so again with Clarissa Ward.

Clarissa Ward – Some dates

1980 — Born in London
2002 — Graduated Yale University with BA in comparative literature
2002 — CNN Moscow internship
2003 — FOX News Overnight Assignment Desk
2005 — Moved to Beirut and started working as a freelance producer in Baghdad / Beirut / Middle East
2007 — ABC News Moscow Correspondent
2009 — ABC News Beijing Correspondent
2011 — CBS News Correspondent based out of London, mostly covering the Syrian civil war
2011 — Peabody Award for her undercover work during the Syrian uprising
2013 — DuPont Columbia Award for her work in Syria for CBS News
2015 — Murrow Award for International Reporting, Washington State University
2015 — Joined CNN
2016 — Peabody Award for the CNN reports: ISIS in Iraq and Syria, Undercover in Syria, Battle for Mosul
2016 — David Kaplan Award for Undercover in Syria
2016 — Excellence in International Reporting Award from the International Center for Journalists
2018 — Appointed CNN Chief International Correspondent
2019 — Reporter of the year for Alliance of Women in Media (AWM)
2020 — “On All Fronts: the Education of a Journalist” is published
2020 — DuPont Award with Nic Robertson for CNN’s reporting on the assassination of Jamal Khashoggi
2023 — Emmy and DuPont Awards for Ukraine coverage