Ellana Lee, ContentAsia’s Asia Media Woman of the Year 2018, talks about women’s empowerment, what it’s like working in an era of fake news and how she never feels threatened in North Korea.

“Women’s empowerment starts at home,” says CNN International SVP and Asia Pacific managing editor, Ellana Lee. Accepting

ContentAsia’s 2018 Asia Media Woman of the Year Award, Lee told dinner guests that “of all the years to win this award, the significance of 2018 does not escape me... women have mustered the courage to tell their horrifying stories, and also to find a global community of women and men to come out to support them and start to right some of the wrongs that exist today.” Now in its sixth year, the ContentAsia award recognises the outstanding achievements of female leaders in the media industry in Asia.

Lee is CNN International’s most senior person outside of the U.S., and is also the global head of CNN Vision, which produces more than 1,300+ hours of original premium long- and short-form editorial content on everything from sports and style to food and travel. A separate unit, Create, deals with sponsor-funded/branded content.

In her keynote at the ContentAsia Summit the following day, Lee talked about real fake news and facts that people don’t happen to like or agree with. “There is absolutely fake news out there. It’s misinformation which people interpret as real news... the fake news we’re talking in the context of [U.S. president Donald] Trump is absolutely different. The news that the president does not like or doesn’t agree with, he considers fake news. That’s not a definition of fake news,” she said.

She described living in Trump’s fake news environment as “challenging. It takes a lot of courage. We have to stay purposeful in what we’re doing. It’s not easy when the most powerful person in the world is consistently threatening journalists... It’s a very unsettling position to be in, to be threatened as an organisation in this industry. And that’s what we’re faced with on top of the all the other challenges.”

A recent one was the U.S.-North Korea Summit in Singapore, to which the news organisation sent 80 people. The event was not only major for CNN.

Lee, who was born and grew up in South Korea, called North Korea “a tricky situation for me”. Of her multiple visits to the Hermit Kingdom, she said: “You go through a variety of emotions. I think the first emotion is a stage of wonder and a stage of ‘wow I can’t believe that this is how this country is run or this is what it looks like’. It’s bit surreal but then, the longer you stay, there is an emotional tug. A couple days after that you really feel that just for the luck of where my ancestors decided to be at that time, that day, that year. They managed to be on the other side of the DMZ line and that completely changed their fate and my family. And if you think about that, it really starts to pull on you”. In addition to the emotional highs and lows, North Korea also involves “mental highs and lows and is very physical challenging as well.” But her many trips have been rewarding. “Believe it or not,” she said, “there is a respect for what we have done. I never feel threatened in North Korea”.

Published in ContentAsia's Issue Five 2018, 4 October 2018