Deborah Amos

Credit Steve Barrett

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.

Amos travels extensively across the Middle East covering a range of stories including the rise of well-educated Syria youth who are unqualified for jobs in a market-drive economy, a series focusing on the emerging power of Turkey and the plight of Iraqi refugees.

In 2009, Amos won the Edward Weintal Prize for Diplomatic Reporting from Georgetown University and in 2010 was awarded the Edward R. Murrow Life Time Achievement Award by Washington State University. Amos was part of a team of reporters who won a 2004 Alfred I. duPont-Columbia Award for coverage of Iraq. A Nieman Fellow at Harvard University in 1991-1992, Amos was 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 an Alfred I. duPont-Columbia Award and a Break thru 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 began her career after receiving a degree in broadcasting from the University of Florida at Gainesville.

Syrian Rebels Bring Fight To Capital

Next image Previous image

Credit AFP / Getty Images

A Syrian man carries a wounded girl next to Red Crescent ambulances following an explosion Friday reportedly targeting a military bus near Qudssaya, a neighborhood in Damascus.

Credit AFP/Getty Images

Syrian security forces inspect the scene of an explosion Friday in Damascus.

Credit Reuters / Landov

Free Syrian Army members, with covered faces and holding weapons, sit by the side of a street Monday in the Qaboon district in Damascus.

By Deborah Amos

Originally published on Tue June 12, 2012 8:11 am

Listen

The fighting in Syria escalated again on Monday as the Syrian army pounded the central cities of Homs and Hama, two places that have been the scene of repeated clashes.

U.N. monitors confirmed mortar fire, heavy artillery and machine gun fire in the assaults. A live streaming video from Homs showed billowing smoke from explosions and the rattle of gunfire.

Activists in Homs say more than 50 people have died, and they called for immediate assistance for the scores of wounded who, they say, are being treated by paramedic and medial students.

3:14 pm

Fri June 8, 2012

In A Syrian Village, Evidence Of A Slaughter

Credit Edlib News Network / AP

Anti-government protesters in the northern Syrian village of Hass protest on Thursday following the deaths of dozens of civilians a day earlier in the village of Mazraat al-Qubair. The banner reads, "The al-Qubair massacre challenges the world's humanity."

By Deborah Amos

Originally published on Fri June 8, 2012 7:03 pm

Listen

NPR correspondent Deborah Amos joined U.N. monitors and a small group of journalists Friday who were able to enter the Syrian village of Mazraat al-Qubair, where 78 people, including women and children, were killed on Wednesday by pro-government forces, according to opposition activists.

3:22 pm

Thu June 7, 2012

In Syria, Some Places 'Are Already Living The Civil War'

Credit AP

A Syrian boy sits in the rubble of house which was destroyed during a military operation by the Syrian pro-Assad army in April in the town of Taftanaz, Syria.

By Deborah Amos

NPR's Deborah Amos has been covering the uprising in Syria since it began more than a year ago. Like other foreign reporters, she has had to cover much of the conflict from afar because the Syrian government has only rarely granted visas. She has just returned to Syria for the first time since last fall and sent this dispatch:

7:37 am

Thu May 31, 2012

Preaching Nonviolence, Syrian Activist Heads Home

Credit Jeff Watts / American University

Sheik Jawdat Said, 81, has been urging nonviolent protest in Syria for decades, and has been arrested many times. A scholar and an activist, shown here speaking at American University in Washington in March, he is heading back to Syria this week and plans to resume his call for peaceful opposition to the government.

By Deborah Amos

Syria's foremost proponent of nonviolent protest says he's returning to Damascus this week and will keep delivering his long-standing message despite the country's worsening bloodshed.

Sheik Jawdat Said is an 81-year-old Islamic scholar whose books and teachings helped inspire young Syrian activists to challenge the regime in peaceful protests last year.

3:33 am

Sun May 13, 2012

Largely Unseen, Syria Carries Out Arrest Campaign

Next image Previous image

Credit AFP/Getty Images

Syrian President Bashar Assad's government has waged a two-pronged campaign against the opposition, critics say. His military continues to fight, while nonviolent activists are being detained in increasing numbers, according to monitoring groups.

Credit Yin Bogu / Xinhua/Landov

While fighting continues in Syria, the government has been detaining many nonviolent activists, according to monitoring groups. Here, Syrian soldiers are shown on a bridge in Damascus last November.

By Deborah Amos

President Bashar Assad's regime has launched a new and sweeping arrest campaign of opposition activists and intellectuals in the past few weeks, according to Western analysts and diplomats.

The growing tally of arrests has gone largely unnoticed, overshadowed by the daily violence that threatens to jeopardize the U.N. peace plan. But in combination, both are undermining the already faint hopes of peace.

Deborah Amos		RSS
All Content	closeNews podcasts Use iTunes Use a different player	RSS
View all podcasts & RSS feeds

Now Playing

Podcasts & RSS Feeds

Deborah Amos

Pages

World

3:54 am

Mon June 11, 2012