Ling’s career follows passion

It was Sept. 11 that propelled Lisa Ling out of the comfort of the ABC-TV daytime show “The View” and back into the field to cover stories of global atrocities against women and children.

Just after terrorists had attacked the World Trade Center, Ling said to the television audience that, unfathomable as the act was, “maybe we should just stop and ask why anyone might want to do that to us.”

Listeners bombarded “The View” with critical e-mail. “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” letter writers said. “Go back to China.”

Ling, who was from Sacramento, Calif., instead felt driven to return to the global reporting she had pursued earlier.

On Monday at the Spokane Convention Center, she described the convictions underlying her career during a keynote speech to a sold-out audience of 2,100 at the annual Women Helping Women Fund luncheon. It raised $274,619 to help poor and disadvantaged women and children in Spokane.

“As an American, it’s so important that we collectively try to learn as much as we can about what’s going on in the world because there are so many sides to every story,” Ling said.

As a young reporter for Channel One News, a network seen in middle and high schools around the country, Ling flew to Afghanistan in 1994. There, she was surrounded by throngs of young boys armed with weapons larger than they were.

“It was so surreal to look into this group of young boys who had looks of utter lifelessness in their eyes,” she said. “They looked at me as though they could have shot me right then and there and thought nothing of it.”

When she returned to the United States, Ling realized how little Americans knew about events in Afghanistan.

“It was the first sort of epiphany for me,” she said. “It was the moment when I realized that there aren’t enough people telling these global stories that are vitally, vitally important.”

After the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Ling went to work for the National Geographic Channel, covering stories such as the looting of antiquities in Iraq and the phenomenon of female suicide bombers in Chechnya.

When she was asked to become a special correspondent for “The Oprah Winfrey Show,” Ling was asked to focus on stories of women and children.

“Initially when they said that to me, I said, ‘OK, I can do that. But I’m a journalist. I cover all kinds of stories. I jump out of helicopters and bust drug labs in the jungles and so on. … I’m kind of a guy’s guy journalist.’ “

Then she was sent on a couple of stories that changed her life.

One was a story on the widespread practice of bride burning in India – wives who cannot meet their husbands’ dowry demands are doused with kerosene and set on fire. Another story covered women who have been gang-raped in the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

“When I witnessed the egregious injustices that are directed toward women and children in the world every single day,” Ling said, “it became difficult to not want to get out there on the forefront and tell these stories.”

Her convictions mirror those of the organization that sponsored her visit, Spokane’s Women Helping Women Fund. This year, it raised approximately $40,000 more than last year and will give grants to 15 programs, including volunteer house-parent training at the Vanessa Behan Crisis Nursery, volunteer mentors and parenting groups for pregnant teens at Catholic Charities and pregnancy prevention for adolescent girls at Planned Parenthood.

“I am truly, truly convinced that if women don’t stand up for each other, no one will,” Ling said.