Opinion: On all Fronts, On her Own Terms: Clarissa Ward on Sensibility and Fearlessness

Note: This is an opinion piece by Staff Writer, Valeria Abram

Journalism is a profession that most people admire, respect, and fear at the same time. Scrutiny and judgement are at the centre. Those who can speak to citizens with clarity are met with bouquets and messages of admiration, as well as critiques and threats from millions. As a young, aspiring journalist, I was in awe of Clarissa Ward’s work. Seeing her on my screen, from Damascus to Ukraine and Yemen, filled me with a fierce curiosity and admiration for a job that still feels difficult to comprehend and attain. The question keeps coming back in different forms: How can I become a voice in a world where men seem to know how to pronounce one’s reality?

I started reading her book during my first internship in a newsroom. I picked up ‘On All Fronts’, a memoir about her experience in conflict zones, to find answers about what journalism is and why there is a fuel that keeps me going, documenting and speaking with others about injustices and struggles. Through her pages, I realised that humanity is at the centre of it all. Sometimes we forget suffering because we become accustomed to it or simply desensitised to pain that feels distant. In her work, I discovered something I hadn’t yet named: the power of sensibility and of easing connection in environments that feel overwhelming, where patriarchal norms of needing to be “strong” or “technical” can feel strange and even derailing when narrating and living moments where suffering is the norm.

Ward narrates her lived experiences in conflict zones from the moment she realised she wanted to become a journalist after the terror attacks of 9/11, watching the towers fall in a friend’s dorm at Yale and asking herself why she hadn’t paid more attention to the world. This opinion column speaks to women and girls who can feel that emotions and sensibility are separate from work and fearlessness. Through Clarissa’s storytelling, I was moved to see that emotions are not obstacles to be left at home but rather tools that can make a piece more powerful and lasting.

One story in the book that resonated with me was her encounter in Moscow with excess, abuse, and misogyny. She describes meeting Saif Gaddafi, the second son of Muammar Gaddafi, and being easily overlooked because of her gender, facing the inner dilemma of not knowing how to react without being labelled “chippy,” “aggressive,” or a “bitch.” She names a dilemma that is often described but not explored deeply which accuses women of condoning their own silence by refusing to ‘push back’. Wanting to break cycles and be perceived as strong and independent women, female reactions have often been dismissed as “too emotional.” These connotations seem ingrained in many of our minds and shapes how women respond out of fear of rejection due to gender or emotion.

After that dinner, which reads like a fiasco, they went to a lavish nightclub. In the car ride she shared with her friend Alex, Saif, and his bodyguard, he tried to force a kiss; she pushed him away and yelled at him. It seemed impossible to him that she wanted nothing to do with him until Alex stepped in. Her experience in the nightclub made me realise the duality many women navigate today. Men still control much of the world, and there is a constant pressure to satisfy that control, with opportunistic, almost automatic responses while trying to preserve one’s dignity and life. In the strip club, she describes feeling somewhat depressed as she humanises the dancers where she places their young ages, their struggles, and the “fakeness” of their laughs at the centre.

Quoting Salman Rushdie’s Shame, she connects that bottled feeling to these Russian women. Although Rushdie writes about sexual repression in Pakistan, the connection to Western societies is strong: we claim we should not feel shame because we live in “liberation” and “freedom,” yet she questions how true that really is.

Ward shows not just confrontation but connection. Another story that moved me was her emotional bond with the people she met throughout her reporting. Her ability to connect with fixers, language teachers, and families who took her in during her time abroad reflects a deeper sense of womanhood and of reporting. Those relationships reveal how care, curiosity, and vulnerability can sit alongside courage in the field. There is a need to increase women’s representation across all areas where reporting is certainly one of them.

Clarissa shows that two great instincts can work together: sensibility and fearlessness. She narrates the heartbreak of saying goodbye to the family who hosted her in Idlib, the impact they had on her and vice versa. Soon after, she is smuggled out of the country into Turkey. She argues that to do reporting, there needs to be an ability to turn the constant suffering on and off. The overarching feeling that resonated with me however, was her female self rising as the central figure, unapologetically present in her work.

The story that stayed with me most was her experience in Bangladesh as a mother. Motherhood changed how she understood conflict and, therefore, her work. Interviewing a Rohingya mother fleeing a genocide that the world was watching, she asked herself why anyone chose to have a child at all, to bring a baby into a world where ugliness persisted even once people knew about it. This question haunted me too, but it also reinforced how her journalism is shaped by love and responsibility, not weakened by them.

Overall, Clarissa represents how women can do the “hard” jobs differently from men. Whether through meaningful connections with fixers, language teachers, or guides, or through reporting with profound courage. As a power figure, redefining feminism is about the possibility of doing journalism on one’s own terms. From tying her hair up and refusing others’ advice to “please” men in the newsroom, to separating herself from comments such as a Taliban leader asking why CNN hadn’t sent a man to do her job, she embodies journalism as a force of leadership, commitment, and grace that is truly admirable.