Event Coverage Highlight

On Oct. 19, OPC Award winner Jane Ferguson, a veteran correspondent who has covered some of the world’s biggest conflicts in recent years, discussed her memoir, No Ordinary Assignment, with Elizabeth Becker, an award-winning reporter and author whose career spans four decades starting with coverage of Cambodia during the Vietnam War for The Washington Post.

Click the window above to watch a playlist of video clips from the program.

No Ordinary Assignment is available for purchase here.

Ferguson discussed her early life and career path, growing up on a farm in Northern Ireland during the final years of the Troubles, and later studying Arabic in Yemen, working in Dubai, and then flying to Afghanistan to begin reporting as a freelancer in the early 2000s. Her career took her to Somalia, Sudan and Yemen, where she reported regularly on conflicts for CNN, and then to Syria to report for Al Jazeera. Ferguson and Becker also discussed recent violence between Hamas and Israel, including thoughts on current media coverage, the killing of journalists, the targeting of civilians and other war crimes in the conflict.

Becker is author of You Don’t Belong Here, the long-buried story of three extraordinary female journalists who permanently shattered the official and cultural barriers to women covering war. She has reported for The Washington Post, National Public Radio and The New York Times. Becker is also the author of When the War Was Over: Cambodia and the Khmer Rouge Revolution; and Overbooked: The Exploding Business of Travel and Tourism.”