'I Just Couldn't Watch Anymore': Former CNN Anchor On The Emotional Cost Of Bearing Witness

By the time Hala Gorani was ten, she had already delivered her first news report. But it wasn't on television or to an audience of millions. It was to her father, who was returning home after work, unaware that President Ronald Reagan had just survived an assassination attempt. Gorani, who had been glued to the special coverage on TV, relayed every detail she could remember. There were no phones then, no Internet. Just her childlike curiosity and the instinct to inform.“I essentially reported it to him,” she recalls.“And I was only ten.”

That moment planted a seed. For Gorani, it was the start of a calling. One that would eventually span more than two decades at CNN, take her to the frontlines of conflict, and establish her as one of the most trusted faces in international news broadcasting. Today, Gorani is also a published author, with her recent memoir But You Don't Look Arab exploring identity, belonging, and the politics of perception through the lens of her own upbringing between Washington and Paris as a Syrian-American woman navigating the world.

A childhood of contradictions

Born to Syrian parents, Gorani grew up between Washington D.C. and Paris. Her childhood, like her identity, was a jigsaw of places, languages, and expectations.“I have all these overlapping identities,” she says.“And that made me, for a long time, feel out of place everywhere.”

Her parents divorced early, splitting her upbringing across continents. Home was a fluid concept for Gorani, one not necessarily rooted in a postcode but in the rituals of constant movement and readjustment.“My origin didn't match where I lived,” she adds.“But now, more people than ever are in this situation. You're born in one country, raised in another, work in a third. So, where do you belong?”

In cities like Dubai, where over 90 per cent of the population is non-Emirati, Gorani's sense of hybrid identity resonates deeply.“You build your own definition of home,” she says.“That's what I've learned to do.”

Gorani's memoir isn't simply a personal reckoning but also a broader cultural reflection on what it means to live between identities, and how the label 'Arab' has been shaped, flattened, and misread by Western and even Middle Eastern societies alike.“Even the title, 'But You Don't Look Arab', came from something I heard countless times,” she says.“It speaks to the assumptions people make about how you're supposed to look, speak, or behave based on where you're from.”

The book marks a new chapter in her career, but also reveals the same rigour that defined her journalism trajectory. She has previously covered the war in Iraq, the 2006 conflict in Lebanon, and the humanitarian crisis in Darfur, among others, always gravitating towards stories that humanise those on the margins.

However, in 2022, after years of anchoring at CNN, a role widely viewed as the summit of broadcast journalism, Gorani chose to walk away from it all.“You become a journalist because you want this sense of purpose, of telling stories, being where things happen,” she reflects.“Anchoring a show, while prestigious, became more and more removed from that. I wanted to reconnect with why I started this journey.”

Writing the memoir offered her that reconnection. It was a way of tracing the line through generations of her family - of women who moved, fled, or were uprooted, often without choice.“I realised one generation after another, for one reason or another, migrated or felt displaced,” she adds.“From the fall of the Ottoman Empire to Syria to France to the US, my great-great-grandmother was forced to move to a place she'd never seen before. I'm just one more stop on that long journey.”

With such deep-rooted displacement comes an instinct to bear witness and Gorani has done that, often at great personal cost. During the early days of the Syrian revolution, she watched harrowing videos daily: graphic footage of violence against demonstrators, scenes she now associates with post-traumatic stress.“I became incapable of watching such videos anymore,” she admits.“I'd take my earpiece out when anchoring if I knew the story was too hard. I just didn't want to hear children crying.”

Recognising those emotional boundaries was, she says, an act of strength.“You're not supposed to be desensitised to people getting killed. It's not a weakness to say 'I can't'. It's strength.” And even now, she draws her limits.“I've never watched an ISIS execution video. I don't care who's in it. The thought is enough.”

Gorani is also acutely aware of journalism's precarious future.“The media industry is in flux. Legacy platforms are shrinking. Local papers are shutting. Social media has taken over but it doesn't pay journalists for their work,” she adds.“I spent three and a half weeks fact-checking a story on Syria. That's what people don't see. Journalism takes time, and that's what makes it journalism.”

Still, she understands why Gen-Z might hesitate to enter the field.“You're competing not just with other networks now, but with TikTok, YouTube, everyone.”

Her memoir contains a powerful line: 'As a journalist, I record the time, the place and the facts. As a human being, I want to know why some people don't break'. She pauses when asked where that resilience comes from.“I don't know. I'm still observing,” she says.“Some people are just born with more resilience. I've interviewed journalists in Gaza recently. Some are cracking, others are joking and smiling. Is it upbringing? Is it temperament? Maybe both.”

And as for her?“Oh, I break all the time,” she says, candidly.“I'm emotionally porous. I cry often, just not on TV. I'd be worried if I didn't feel anything. That would mean something's wrong.”

The introspection that shaped her memoir has also helped her make peace with belonging, she admits. Not by finding a single place to call home, but by returning to her purpose.“For me, fieldwork is a higher calling. It takes me out of my own head,” she says.“Some people find it through parenting, others through service. For me, it's this.”

And in journeying back to the roots of her purpose, not a place, Gorani reminds us that belonging isn't always tied to geography. Sometimes, it's about doing the thing that anchors you, even when the ground beneath you keeps shifting.

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