
Deborah Amos
Deborah Amos covers the Middle East for NPR News. Her reports can be heard on NPR's award-winning Morning Edition, All Things Considered, and Weekend Edition.
In 2009, Amos won the Edward Weintal Prize for Diplomatic Reporting from Georgetown University and in 2010 was awarded the Edward R. Murrow Lifetime Achievement Award by Washington State University. Amos was part of a team of reporters who won a 2004 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia University Award for coverage of Iraq. A Nieman Fellow at Harvard University in 1991-1992, Amos returned to Harvard in 2010 as a Shorenstein Fellow at the Kennedy School.
In 2003, Amos returned to NPR after a decade in television news, including ABC's Nightline and World News Tonight, and the PBS programs NOW with Bill Moyers and Frontline.
When Amos first came to NPR in 1977, she worked first as a director and then a producer for Weekend All Things Considered until 1979. For the next six years, she worked on radio documentaries, which won her several significant honors. In 1982, Amos received the Prix Italia, the Ohio State Award, and a DuPont-Columbia Award for "Father Cares: The Last of Jonestown," and in 1984 she received a Robert F. Kennedy Journalism Award for "Refugees."
From 1985 until 1993, Amos spend most of her time at NPR reporting overseas, including as the London Bureau Chief and as an NPR foreign correspondent based in Amman, Jordan. During that time, Amos won several awards, including a duPont-Columbia Award and a Breakthru Award, and widespread recognition for her coverage of the Gulf War in 1991.
A member of the Council on Foreign Relations, Amos is also the author of Eclipse of the Sunnis: Power, Exile, and Upheaval in the Middle East (Public Affairs, 2010) and Lines in the Sand: Desert Storm and the Remaking of the Arab World (Simon and Schuster, 1992).
Amos is a Ferris Professor at Princeton, where she teaches journalism during the fall term.
Amos began her career after receiving a degree in broadcasting from the University of Florida at Gainesville.
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Saudi Arabian women made history by voting and winning public office for the first time. But there are still many obstacles to an equal role in public life.
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Up until now, women in Saudi Arabia had been barred from participating in elections — both as candidates and voters. Saudi women are still banned from driving.
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The kingdom launched a new Farsi website this week, but how will an Iranian audience react?
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Saudi women gamers gather at an annual convention, dressing as their favorite characters and exercising freedoms they want to see more of in their lives.
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The U.N. is resuming peace talks on the war in Yemen. At the same time, the U.S. plans to sell more weapons to Saudi Arabia, even as civilian casualties from Saudi airstrikes in Yemen continue.
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For the first time, women in the country can run for office and vote. But they're still banned from driving and need a male guardian's permission to travel, work and pursue higher education.
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Through years of brutal civil war, a Syrian film collective has been producing short films, which are now in a New York gallery, where the collective hopes to show a more human side of war victims.
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The Islamic State claims it's building a caliphate that welcomes true Muslims. But Syrian refugees, as well as those displaced inside the country, are sending a very different message as they flee.
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As domestic and international criticism mounts, Saudi Arabia and its peers are under pressure to review their policies toward migrants and refugees. They say they're already doing a lot to help.
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Millions of Syrian refugees have been waiting out the war in neighboring states. As the fighting grinds on, and Europe starts to open the doors, additional waves of refugees may head north.