A brown bag talk with Jane Arraf, Senior Baghdad Correspondent for CNN

Presented in cooperation with the SIPA International Media and Communication Concentration

Jane Arraf has seen Iraq through sanctions, crises, and the ongoing war. Her experience in the frontlines and interactions with soldiers and civilians from both sides provide her a valuable on-the-ground perspective.

Arraf will discuss the constraints of reporting from Iraq and how the gathering of information has changed since the war. She will comment on the implications of these media constraints on U.S. foreign policy and on public perception of the war, and will also touch on the ever-important and sometimes controversial relationship between the military and the media, as well as on the impact of the growing local media.

Jane Arraf is the Edward R. Murrow Press Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. She is currently on leave from CNN where she has been Baghdad Bureau Chief and Senior Baghdad Correspondent. Arraf joined CNN in 1998 as its first permanent Baghdad Baghdad Bureau Chief and was for several years the only Western correspondent based in Iraq. She has covered Iraq through crisis, sanctions, and the continuing war. She moved to Istanbul, Turkey as CNN Bureau Chief in 2001, returning to Baghdad as Bureau Chief in 2002.

Before joining CNN, Arraf worked as a reporter for Reuters Financial Television in Washington, D.C. where her assignments included covering the White House, Capitol Hill and the Treasury Department. She also served as Reuters Bureau Chief in Jordan from 1990 to 1993, and has worked as a Reuters correspondent in Montreal and Reuters correspondent/desk editor in New York and Washington D.C. Arraf reported extensively from Iraq for Reuters after the 1991 Gulf War. Other reporting assignments included India, Haiti and Bosnia. She studied journalism at Carleton University in Ottawa.