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The Amanpour Hour
Interview With Harvard University Professor Of Government Steven Levitsky; Interview With "The Director" Author Daniel Kehlmann; 600 Days After October 7th Attack, 58 Hostages Still Held In Gaza; Chaos Erupts During Aid Delivery After Months-Long Blockade; Interview With Son Of David Frost And "David Frost VS" Producer And Creator Wilfred Frost; Remembering Sebastiao Salgado; Happy Birthday, CNN. Aired 11a-12p ET
Aired May 31, 2025 - 11:00 ET
THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.
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[11:00:40]
CHRISTIANE AMANPOUR, CNN CHIEF INTERNATIONAL ANCHOR: Hello everyone, and welcome to THE AMANPOUR HOUR.
Here's where we're headed this week.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: An all-out war on academic freedom as Trump escalates his battle with Harvard.
STEVEN LEVITSKY, PROFESSOR OF GOVERNMENT, HARVARD UNIVERSITY: I share the view that Americans have been very slow to react to Trump's authoritarianism.
AMANPOUR: Steven Levitsky, the professor and author of "How Democracies Die" joins me to discuss reshaping knowledge in America.
Then -- what it was like making films for Joseph Goebbels and the Nazis.
DANIEL KEHLMANN, AUTHOR, "THE DIRECTOR": How far do you go as an artist in compromising for what you think is your artistic vision?
AMANPOUR: Bestselling German author Daniel Kehlmann on his new book, "The Director".
And --
600 bloody days of war, mass murder, civilian slaughter, siege between Israel and Hamas.
Also --
RICHARD NIXON, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: When the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.
DAVID FROST, FORMER TV HOST: By definition.
NIXON: Exactly.
AMANPOUR: The legacy of the legendary TV host David Frost through his iconic interviews. I speak to his son Wilfred about a new documentary series.
And paying tribute to the award-winning Brazilian photographer Sebastiao Salgado. An interview from my archives.
And finally, on its 45th birthday, how CNN changed the news.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: Welcome to the program, everyone. I'm Christiane Amanpour in London.
As America's war on education escalates, universities here and around the world are being sought out as alternative learning platforms.
The Trump administration is broadening its assault on the institutions that shape knowledge and debate in America, revoking scores of student visas, ordering the social media feeds of hopeful incoming classes of foreign students to be vetted. It's already revoked billions of dollars in funding on scientific research, health and other public service endeavors.
Now, in its latest battle this week, the government moved to sever federal contracts with Harvard, the university that's older than the republic itself.
Harvard is leading the pushback in court, but education is clearly ground zero in the battle between two halves of America.
So how will it end? Harvard professor Steven Levitsky and co-author of "How Democracies Die" join me from Boston.
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AMANPOUR: Welcome to the program, Professor Levitsky.
LEVITSKY: Thanks for having me.
AMANPOUR: So I want to ask you, on the one hand, it is pretty grim times facing the full weight of the administration. On the other hand, Harvard is getting a lot of support and seems to be, you know, front and center pushing back against this. How would you describe the mood at Harvard?
LEVITSKY: The mood is very complex. It's really, really mixed. On the one hand, there is almost unanimous support among faculty and students for Harvard's leadership in pushing back against Trump.
What had been a very divided campus last year has really come together in defense of international students, in defense of research, in defense of higher education, which is -- and so, students and faculty are very proud of Harvard.
But there's tremendous, tremendous concern and uncertainty for the future of -- for -- of our research and in particular, our international students, because we are a very international university and really could not operate as Harvard without our international students.
AMANPOUR: I mean, we know that the administration claims that all this is about anti anti-Semitism, combating anti-Semitism. We also know that Harvard, even, you know, last year and beyond, have taken measures against anti-Semitism and apparently DEI.
Trump has also pulled, as we've talked about, billions in federal grants and the latest he's doing with international students.
Do you believe that that is what this is all about?
[11:04:46]
LEVITSKY: No. Absolutely I do not believe that. This is not about antisemitism. It's not about DEI. These are pretexts.
We need to be very clear. This is an authoritarian government that is using the machinery of government, the state as a weapon to punish, to bully, to silence business, media law firms, universities and other elements of civil society. So, this is part of a much broader attack on American democracy.
It's hard to find an autocratic government that does not go after universities, and they always find a pretext. Sometimes it's terrorism, sometimes it's communism. In this case, Trump is using anti-Semitism.
AMANPOUR: And actually, it's interesting because the Hillel Organization on campus has come out and spoken against, you know, denying foreign students because some are even Israeli students, for heaven's sake. It's just a blanket ban.
LEVITSKY: Indeed.
AMANPOUR: So, they've come out. We know that there's many Jewish groups and synagogues and others who've come out and accused, you know, the Trump administration's rationale as being cynical. And it -- you know, they should make no mistake that it's not really about protecting the Jewish community.
Professor, I'm not an entirely disinterested party. I was a foreign student in the United States 45 years ago, and I actually gave the graduation speech just yesterday to the Harvard Kennedy School of Graduates more than half of whom are, as you say, internationals.
But I spoke about something, which I know that you've spoken about and even a former Harvard president, Drew Gilpin Faust, has just written about.
The apparent lack of resistance, not just -- not at Harvard but around the country to this assault that you've been discussing.
I just want to play a little bit of what I said and get you to comment on how you feel about it. And I was quoting basically the patron saint of broadcast journalists, Edward R. Murrow, who after his distinguished World War II career as a foreign correspondent took on McCarthyism and the Red Scare at home.
This is what I said.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: So, always remember, as Edward R. Murrow said, that dissent is not disloyalty. Dissent is actually an invaluable part of our democratic process. We cannot surrender to any system that deems only power-approved speech or thought is allowed.
The whole point of journalism and any other academic enterprise is to investigate power, speak truth to power, hold power accountable without fear nor favor.
Edward R. Morrow said on his programs holding Senator Joe McCarthy to account, "No one man can terrorize a whole nation unless we are all his accomplices."
(END VIDEO CLIP)
LEVITSKY: It's a shame that Murrow's words are so relevant, so pertinent today, but I think you were right to raise them. My sense -- I share the view that Americans have been very slow to react to Trump's authoritarianism. I think, this has a lot to do with the fact that we have no recent experience with authoritarianism. We have no collective memory of authoritarianism, unlike say, Germany or Argentina or Chile or Brazil or South Korea. We didn't really know what to expect.
Many, many Americans still believe that it can't possibly happen here.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: Coming up later in the show, what was it like making art for Joseph Goebbels and the Nazis? I ask best-selling German novelist Daniel Kehlmann about his new book, "The Director".
Also ahead, a new documentary series about the legendary journalist and TV host David Frost, whose iconic interviews changed the way we looked at world leaders.
His son and series producer Wilfred Frost joins me on set.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
WILFRED FROST, SON OF DAVID FROST: Because he's just dad. We didn't press him on his career every day at home. And this process of making this series is sort of my way of making up for that a little bit.
(END VIDEO CLIP) [11:08:48]
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AMANPOUR: Welcome back to the program.
Now to an acclaimed new novel written by the bestselling German author, Daniel Kehlmann. "The Director" takes a fictionalized look at the real life of Austrian director George W. Pabst, one of the greatest filmmakers of the silent era.
He helped launch the career of Greta Garbo, for instance, and he produced pictures like "Pandora's Box", which have reached a mythic status in cinema.
The novel follows Pabst in his most controversial period, when he was cast out by Hollywood and trapped in Nazi-occupied Austria. Pabst soon finds himself making movies for Joseph Goebbels, head of the Nazi propaganda machine.
Author Daniel Kehlmann joined me to discuss this complex character.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: Daniel Kehlmann, welcome to the program.
KEHLMANN: Thank you so much.
AMANPOUR: So the book is "The Director." It's a novel. And the story is quite dramatic and it also happens to be true.
So, you are telling the story of a man called G.W. Pabst, a German. He escaped Nazi Germany in the early 1930s and went to Hollywood. He wanted to make films. But then, not too long after that, he went back to make movies in Nazi Germany.
[11:14:50]
AMANPOUR: So explain who he is, why you chose him, and what kind of movies he ended up making.
KEHLMANN: He was one of the great directors of the silent movie era. He -- as you said, he went to Hollywood. He got to make one film there.
The studio system treated him terribly. They didn't let him edit his own film. They didn't let him decide where to put the camera. They didn't let him pick the actors or the script.
So he ended up going back, for strange and complicated reasons, but certainly having something to do with the fact that it let -- didn't really let him do his craft in Hollywood.
And in -- back in Germany, he made films for the Nazis after some initial hesitation. They were not propaganda. They're actually -- which makes the thing even more strange and complicated -- they're not bad films. You can still watch them, you won't be appalled at all.
AMANPOUR: You know, let me -- there's two big points there. Number one, was he uniquely singled out in Hollywood for this kind of treatment, or was that just the way the studios worked with no matter which director, having a lot of control over what the directors did?
KEHLMANN: Exactly. It was the way the studio system worked. A director was just a hired craftsperson. And of course, in Germany they were Fritz Lang, Murnau and Pabst, they were what we later would call auteur (ph), like they were in charge of the whole thing. And they were expected to create a unique masterpiece.
And yes, he then tried to do that when he was back and working for Goebbels. And of course --
AMANPOUR: I need to stop you.
KEHLMANN: -- he got all the resources.
AMANPOUR: I need to stop you, because Goebbels, it's a word that sends chills down everybody's spine or it should.
You said they weren't propaganda. How could it not be propaganda when you're working for the propaganda machine? I mean, that's what Goebbels ran in Nazi Germany.
How could it not be propaganda? How could it be pure art working for the Nazis?
KEHLMANN: Because the Nazis wanted to use pure art as propaganda. And of course, that's a contradictory idea. And we can, yes, have very different opinions about whether that worked. I think it actually didn't work really, of course.
But the idea was to show the rest of the world that they would not just run very disciplined fascist country, that they could also make better art. And for that, they wanted some of the few great artists who hadn't escaped them or were still there and were still allowed to work or forced to work, in the case of some like Pabst when he was back. And yes.
(CROSSTALKING)
KEHLMANN: They wanted to make art.
AMANPOUR: Ok. Forced to work -- what does forced to work mean?
KEHLMANN: Forced to work means that the minister of propaganda, Goebbels, exerted a lot of pressure on him to make films. And what makes the thing so complicated is that he had kind of come back to make films, but then he was also hesitating, of course, because he was not a fascist.
But of course, on the other hand, it's not just generally immoral to work for the Nazis, it was an industry that relied on forced labor. You had -- and every part of the work on the movie set was done by -- as in all German industries in the wartime, by forced laborers and slave workers.
So there's absolutely no question that this is wrong. But it's fascinating because it asks the question of how far do you go as an artist in compromising for what you think is your artistic vision?
And so he started to go down that long road of compromise that yes, we see many people in all kinds of environments, including today, go down.
AMANPOUR: And finally, you are living in the United States, you live in New York.
You know, you said to "The New York Times" for us visa and green card holders, free speech is already practically suspended.
What's it like being a foreigner, a green card holder, or a visa holder in the U.S. now?
KEHLMANN: It's very strange because you feel this can end any moment. They can send you home any moment if you say something, quote/unquote, "wrong".
So what you have in the United States now is what I would call an asymmetrical dictatorship. For some people, it's still completely fine and they feel free and do whatever they want. And other people have to be very careful, like the hundreds of thousands of visa holders. And other people hide in their apartments because they are disappeared and are sent to concentration camps in El Salvador, as the government says, forever.
[11:19:45]
AMANPOUR: It's a really cautionary tale. Your novel has come out at an incredible time, which I'm sure you didn't predict, but here it lands.
KEHLMANN: Yes.
AMANPOUR: "The Director." Daniel Kehlmann, thank you very much indeed for joining us.
KEHLMANN: Thank you so much for having me.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: In a moment, more than 600 days of war, tens of thousands of casualties, and Israeli allies starting to turn against the carnage while hostages remain in Gaza, when we come back.
[11:20:15]
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AMANPOUR: Welcome back.
We now turn to the Middle East, where there's growing condemnation by staunch allies even of Israel's escalating war on Gaza, its siege and dramatic humanitarian crisis. With scenes like these showing the intensity of hunger and desperation on Palestinian faces.
The IDF has said it plans to conquer 75 percent of Gaza within two months, and move all Palestinians close to 2 million into just one quarter of the enclave.
Opposition to the war is growing inside Israel as well. Among those speaking out is the country's former prime minister, Ehud Olmert, who talked to this program earlier in the week.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
EHUD OLMERT, FORMER ISRAELI PRIME MINISTER: What is it if not a war crime? I mean, how can a serious person representing the Israeli government can spell it out in such an explicit manner that we should starve Gaza?
The group of thugs which are now representing the Israeli government inside Israel, and across the world, are committing actions which can't be interpreted in any other way.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: It is a remarkable admission really, evidence of just how deeply this war has shaken the country.
600 days since Hamas militants staged their murderous attack on October 7th, 600 days and they are still holding 58 Israeli hostages.
And now Jeremy Diamond has this report from Nahal Oz, Israel.
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JEREMY DIAMOND, CNN CORRESPONDENT: Lishay Miran has been fighting this fight for 600 days.
Six hundred days since Hamas militants broke into her house and shattered her world, 600 days since they took this father from his home.
LISHAY MIRAN-LAVI, WIFE OF HOSTAGE OMRI MIRAN: At the moment that the terrorists get inside our home, Roni was sleeping here. I was here with Alma and Omri stand here next to the door with two knives in his hand.
DIAMOND: Now, visits to the home they once shared are interrupted by the sounds of war, jolting Lishay to her husband's dangerous reality.
What goes through your mind when you hear that?
MIRAN-LAVI: I think about them. I think about Omri. What's going on over there when they hear this? Yes. No, I am very scared. I'm really scared and I thought all the time, what they think right now.
DIAMOND: Keith Siegel knows exactly what the hostages are going through.
KEITH SIEGEL, RELEASED HAMAS HOSTAGE: It haunts me daily.
DIAMOND: He survived 484 days in Hamas captivity, enduring abuse.
SIEGEL: I was beaten by terrorists. I experienced physical abuse, psychological and emotional abuse.
DIAMOND: And Israeli bombing.
SIEGEL: I spent most of my time in captivity above ground and I can tell you that it's scary. I can remember that I was sitting on a chair next to a window in an apartment on the fifth floor, a house right next to the apartment that we were staying in was bombed.
I was blown off the chair onto the floor. The windows obviously were all shattered, broken.
DIAMOND: And so as these bombardments are now intensifying, as the Israeli military is threatening to further expand this military offensive, what's going through your mind?
SIEGEL: I worry. I worry about the dangers that the hostages are in. Again, they're in a life-threatening situation.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: And while the hostages remain trapped, meantime, a trickle of aid is now squeaking through the Israeli siege of Gaza. And civilians have been killed just trying to get to that desperately needed food.
Here's some of Oren Liebermann's reporting this week.
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OREN LIEBERMANN, CNN PENTAGON CORRESPONDENT: The flood of people came on a rising tide of hunger, overrunning this aid distribution site within hours.
They want order, but there will be no order because these are desperate people who want to eat and drink, says Wafik Kadaya (ph).
On Tuesday, the new U.S. and Israeli backed aid mechanism began operating, an effort to keep aid away from Hamas while still helping Gazans.
But the scene soon descended into chaos. The Gaza Humanitarian Foundation, the GHF, that runs the mechanism said its staff fell back to allow what it called a small number of Gazans to take aid safely. But this was not a small crowd.
"One million people dream of a piece of bread. It's incredible we had to come from one place to another for a bag of flour," this man says.
[11:29:51]
LIEBERMANN: Thousands of people who have endured a complete 11-week Israeli blockade on humanitarian aid swamped the facility in Southern Gaza, grabbing boxes of food and carrying them off.
Salem Aburabiyah (ph) says he walked seven or eight kilometers to pick up food.
"This war has destroyed families. We want our freedom. Look at the people suffering," he says. "Women walk four kilometers for a liter of oiler, a kilo of sugar or beans, because none of these countries can stop the war."
"We don't want aid in the south," this woman says. "We want it here. We want to eat while we are on our land."
Here, like in so much of Gaza, food remains a scarce commodity. In this soup kitchen in Gaza City, no one waits for the boiling food to cool before filling their empty containers.
Hunger drives the crowd forward, but not everyone is so lucky. "Look, there are people who got the food and we won't get anything," says young Ibrahim Nasser (ph). "Look at this crowd and I've been waiting since the morning.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: And all the while for 600 days, the Israeli government still has not allowed independent foreign journalists to enter Gaza and report there.
Still to come sitting across from pop stars and presidents and teasing out amazing revelations, the new documentary series on David Frost's groundbreaking interviews.
[11:31:17]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
AMANPOUR: Welcome back.
Now to one of the most important interviews in history and the man behind it, David Frost's marathon interrogation of former President Richard Nixon finally revealed the man in his own words after the Watergate crisis and his forced resignation. It was an encounter so electric and pivotal that it's been turned into plays, films and TV shows.
But Frost had plenty of other landmark interviews with a huge array of world leaders and cultural figures. Now, a new documentary series explores some of the most important.
Here's a clip from the trailer.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
BILL CLINTON, FORMER PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: He got people to talk because he inspired trust.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: And he's just charm personified, but underneath is that steel.
D. FROST: Do you feel now optimistic?
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: I'm always optimistic.
AMANPOUR: You have to talk to both sides.
D. FROST: You're making the situation worse, not better.
W. FROST: The single best interview dad ever did.
UNIDENTIFIED MALE: They were looking for confession.
D. FROST: Why did you approve a plan that was clearly illegal?
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: And yes, that was a flash of me. Full disclosure, I'm featured in one of the episodes. It is produced, though, by Frost's son, Wilfred Frost, himself a TV journalist.
He came here to discuss his proud achievement and doing well by dad.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: When your dad died in 2013, and he was given an amazing sendoff, and I was there in Westminster Abbey, right? I mean, it was incredible. All the great and the good came. It was amazing.
Then you noticed that he had an archive and there --
W. FROST: It hadn't completely passed me by when he was alive.
AMANPOUR: Caves --
W. FROST: Yes.
AMANPOUR: -- but did you know all the stuff was there?
W. FROST: No, I didn't. And do you know what, I think my brothers and I reflected on this afterwards, is that because he's just dad, we didn't press him on his career every day at home. And this process of making this series is my way of making up for that a little bit.
But no, I mean, in terms of the archive itself, he had storage depots, two in London, one in New Jersey, one in Cleveland, and two in L.A.
And you can imagine the treasure trove there of stuff. And then I bought back rights from other places too.
AMANPOUR: Did you? That was -- yes. That must have been an intense process. I mean, I'm reading here 10,000 interviews.
W. FROST: Over 10,000 interviews that dad did over the course of 50 years, not just transatlantically in two countries, but really around the world. AMANPOUR: I don't know which one to go. I think I'm going to go with
Nixon first because that is what he is -- and like the Queen, Nixon -- Frost has spawned all sorts of -- you know, of, as I said, TV shows, the film, theaters, this and that.
Let's play this bit of the interview from 1977.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
NIXON: There are some actions that have to be covert. By covert -- let me put it this way --
D. FROST: Or in this case illegal.
NIXON: Well, let me say that it is legal, in my view.
D. FROST: So what, in a sense you're saying is that there are certain situations, and the Houston plan or that part of it was one of them, where the president can decide that it's in the best interest of the nation or something, and do something illegal?
NIXON: Well, when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal.
D. FROST: By definition?
NIXON: Exactly.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: I mean, seriously, that phrase, that sentence, that piece of conviction from Richard Nixon, I mean, stands out in history.
W. FROST: Well, we mentioned, you know, picking episodes that I think we were always going to do a Nixon episode, but picking episodes that would resonate.
And on this one, I couldn't quite believe over the course of the last year, as you know, we were polishing up the episodes, how much modern events came towards the episode and made it even more relevant than I could have imagined.
Of course, with that episode, you'd say 80 percent of it feels very now.
[11:39:48]
W. FROST: At the end, the last 20 percent, he acknowledges wrongdoing. I don't think I'm spoiling the punchline of that story.
AMANPOUR: No, no.
W. FROST: You know, acknowledges wrongdoing and apologizes. So, you know, people can make their own conclusions as to whether that's likely today or not. The thing I just say about that line in particular, it wasn't, in
fact, relating to Watergate. They were talking about the Houston plan. And it's --
AMANPOUR: Which was?
W. FROST: The Houston plan was a plan that Nixon put into action and it allowed burglary, essentially and intelligence community to do what they wanted to do in order to get the evidence to convict and prove people otherwise, even if they hadn't got warrants. I mean, that's the sort of shorthand of it.
But the interesting thing about in the interview as it unfolded is the first third of the interview hadn't gone that well for dad.
AMANPOUR: I was going to ask you because it was a marathon thing. And you do see his producers kind of thinking, dude, you're just too friendly.
W. FROST: Yes.
AMANPOUR: And interestingly, his style was not one of a pit bull. He wasn't Mike Wallace, right? And Clinton, in one of your episodes, says that, you know, it was like going and having a conversation with somebody over coffee.
There's a lot of laughter in a lot of his conversations.
Now, you talked about Elton John, the second episode focuses on his interview in 1991. He had just come out of rehab following years of addiction. So, let's watch this clip.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
ELTON JOHN, BRITISH SINGER-SONGWRITER: You've known me a long time. You've seen me -- you've seen me when I've been happy. You've seen me when I've been troubled. You've seen me when I've been oblivious and on another planet, probably.
But that's the first time I've had peace of mind. It shows. It shows just the way -- I know it. I just feel it.
D. FROST: Everybody feels it, right? I think you look 10 years younger, I sense you more at peace than I've ever seen you before too. More at peace.
JOHN: Yes, I think that's the -- there's no inward battle going on anymore.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: It's a short clip. But you've said that that interview is, you think, one of the best your dad ever did.
W. FROST: Yes. So, dad did 10 with Elton. That was sort of in the middle of the 10 -- 1991. As you said, just fresh out of coming out of rehab.
And, you know, Elton today talks bravely about coming over his addiction, but that was really raw in the moment. And you'll never get that again as sort of central a moment in his life that it was.
And it's two friends really opening up. And somebody used this analogy, which is that at times, and I think this is like that, sometimes as if people came into dad's confessional booth.
AMANPOUR: How do you feel now that it's all out there?
W. FROST: I am so pleased because the feedback's been so great.
But you mentioned his memorial service in Westminster Abbey six months after he died. I remember my brothers and I afterwards saying, dad would've loved this. And I think he'd loved this series, and that to me is job done.
AMANPOUR: You've made him proud.
(END VIDEOTAPE) AMANPOUR: And coming up, as many people mourn the iconic photographer Sebastiao Salgado, from my archive, a tour through his exhibition dedicated to the natural world, something he long fought to protect.
[11:42:45]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
AMANPOUR: Welcome back to the program.
From my archive this week, seeing through the eyes of a legend. Tributes have been pouring in for the award-winning Brazilian photographer Sebastiao Salgado. He died at the age of 81.
He became known for his work on migrants, refugees and laborers toiling in indignity. Also conflict and global events from the Gulf War to the Rwandan genocide.
But it was the natural world that fascinated him most. Both the beauty of the landscapes he pictured and the threat that humans posed to them.
He dubbed one of his last great projects "Genesis". It was his love letter to the planet, he said. An eight-year expedition across mountains, deserts and oceans, capturing a vast array of wildlife along the way.
And back in 2014, I joined him at the exhibition at the International Center of Photography in New York.
Here's our conversation.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: Here it is. Sebastiao Salgado "Genesis". Why did you decide to call this "Genesis"?
SEBASTIAO SALGADO, PHOTOGRAPHER, "GENESIS": Well, for me it's the most precise word to describe it, the beginning. We live yet inside the Genesis.
AMANPOUR: We are still living in what was biblically the Garden of Eden and Genesis?
SALGADO: Absolutely.
AMANPOUR: Sebastiao, when you travel on this amazing expedition and see such beauty, it's not for your work, is it? Isn't this just a fabulous pleasure to do this?
SALGADO: It is. It is not easy, because this place, if they are protected, it's because they are or too far, or too high, or too dry or too cold.
AMANPOUR: So it's hard to get there?
SALGADO: It's harder to get there, you must organize expedition, but is a pleasure, is a privilege, I believe that's the biggest gift that a person can give to themselves, we give to us to go to this place.
AMANPOUR: But it's fantastic. And now, here we are in the Galapagos Islands.
SALGADO: Yes.
AMANPOUR: And this is a massive turtle. Tell me the story about taking this picture, because it looks like you are way down at his level.
SALGADO: You know, this was the first animal that in went to photograph. Before, I had photographed only one animal (ph) all my life, you know, us.
AMANPOUR: This is the first time you didn't shoot people, you shot an animal?
[11:49:44]
SALGADO: Absolutely. It was the first time. And I tried to photograph to get their divinity, the personality of this tortoise. And she (INAUDIBLE). She was afraid.
I tried for an hour. And the moment I was tired, I put myself on my knees, I saw that she start to move. I came down, put my shoulders. I go into my shoulders to her, she came to me.
AMANPOUR: What do you want this work to tell people? How do you want it to touch the people who come and look at these amazing photographs?
SALGADO: Yes, Christiane. And this, for me, is a kind of a state of a union of the planet. It's the cross-section of what we must preserve.
If you want to survive as a species, we must protect what these pictures represent and we must rebuild part what we destroy, if we want to survive as a species.
AMANPOUR: There's a terrible crisis of poaching. People are calling it now almost like organized crime, then using submachine guns to kill elephants and rhinos and others. What did you find in Zambia, for instance when you were photographing the elephants?
SALGADO: Well, for the first time in Zambia we were attacked by an elephant. Elephant attacked our car. You can see --
AMANPOUR: Is this that one? That's running towards you?
SALGADO: Absolutely.
AMANPOUR: I thought you had serious courage to stand in front of that and take the picture.
SALGADO: Well, you see, because these guys that killed the elephants inside of the national parks, they come by car. And elephants now know that when they see a car, they are in danger. And they attack.
AMANPOUR: You have traveled this exhibition around, all over the world. How many people do you think have seen this?
SALGADO: I believe that for now we have a little bit more than 2 million people that saw these pictures around the world.
AMANPOUR: That's huge -- 2 million people. And all of those could be motivated.
SALGADO: Absolutely. And I hope that they were. That the people -- well, we wish that people that come inside the show, they will be not the same going out of this show.
AMANPOUR: You said what's happening to the planet, should raise a red light in our brains, should raise an alarm in our brains, in our minds.
SALGADO: Yes. We are a very recent species in our planet. We have species that have lived much more longer than us, the dinosaurs. They lived for more than 150 million years. They disappeared about 100 million year ago.
We are just arriving in our planet. A few hundreds of thousands, a few millions of years ago. And we can disappear.
AMANPOUR: What is it that you want us to understand about our relationship to all of this beauty, all of this, this planet that we live in?
SALGADO: Everything around us is alive, very alive. All of these mountains, all of these rivers, all of these trees, they are as alive as we are.
We are an animal. We are part of the animal species. We are part of all this. We are nature.
AMANPOUR: Sebastiao Salgado, thank you very much indeed.
SALGADO: My pleasure. Thank you.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: Salgado was an extraordinary person, an extraordinary photographer, an early convert to knowing that we had to work hard, as he said, to save our species, human and wildlife.
When we come back, we will talk about CNN turning 45 this weekend and what founder Ted Turner told me about how he changed the news game.
[11:53:08]
(COMMERCIAL BREAK)
And finally, this weekend marks CNN's 45th anniversary. Here's how Ted Turner announced the media revolution that he launched.
(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)
TED TURNER, FOUNDER, CNN: I dedicate the news channel for America, the Cable News Network.
(END VIDEO CLIP)
AMANPOUR: Which went live at 5:00 p.m. Eastern Time on Sunday, June 1st, 1980. And since then it has covered crucial moments in world history all across the globe. Of course, it was all the brainchild of the visionary entrepreneur and philanthropist Ted Turner.
A few years ago, I went to his Montana ranch to talk to him about what guided him through some of CNN's pivotal moments.
(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: You've said that of all the things you've done and you've done a lot, that CNN is the business achievement of which you're the most proud.
TURNER: Yes. We created CNN.
AMANPOUR: Ten years later was the Gulf War, when CNN really exploded into the international consciousness, in the -- into the global --
TURNER: We were the only ones that were covering the war live from behind the lines.
AMANPOUR: Do you remember all the pushback you got from the president of the United States, from the chairman of the joint chiefs? Ted, get your people out of Baghdad. Did you ever think of obeying those orders?
TURNER: I -- I couldn't do it because, it was too important. And I said, as long as we have people that volunteer to stay and Peter Arnett volunteered. AMANPOUR: You know, fast forward all these years to now, there's a lot
of politics that's involved, even in news coverage. And people can criticize. They can say, well, you know, were you on the side of the Iraqis? Why weren't you, you know, patriotic Americans? What were you doing in the enemy camp? Why were you behind enemy lines?
What do you say today to people who still ask that question? Not just about --
TURNER: They don't ask it.
[11:59:48]
AMANPOUR: Not just about this story.
TURNER: It's -- we change the way things were done. It wasn't -- we weren't anti-American. We were just pro-truth.
(END VIDEOTAPE)
AMANPOUR: Wow. What words. What a leader.
That is all we have time for today. Don't forget, you can find all our shows online as podcasts at CNN.com and on all other major platforms.
I'm Christiane Amanpour in London, thank you for watching and see again next week.
