Amanpour knows she isn't the only one who believes that knowledge is power.
"I think, contrary to what a lot of news executives think, people have a thirst for serious news and information and it's not just about Paris Hilton or Anna Nicole Smith. That's fine and has its place but not in place of what we do. Lots of the executives think that the audience is stupid and I don't subscribe to that. They think, "Just give them any crap and that will be fine. In fact, the more crap the better,' - and I feel exactly the opposite."
Amanpour is the first to admit that the job has become even tougher as her personal responsibilities have increased. Nine years ago she married former US state department spokesman James Rubin and in 2000 their son, Darius, was born.
"I became a foreign correspondent at a time when I was single so I didn't have that extra something to sacrifice. It becomes much more of a sacrifice when you get married and have a child because you just don't want to leave home - it's as basic and as human as that."
Despite the push-pull of work and family commitments, when I ask Amanpour if she thinks there is a difference between male and female war reporters, she says with a glint in her eye: "It's the same, but different." She recalls an incident during the first Gulf war when she was based in Saudi Arabia; a Saudi prince drove her to the Kuwait border to spot Iraqi tanks, landing her an exclusive story.
"Men are generally gracious towards women and that's their default reaction. They don't think a woman needs to be treated as aggressively as a man in the initial encounter. They're mistaken, but that's what they believe."
And how does she feel about the increasing dangers journalists are facing trying to get the story out of the world's most hostile areas? "Without a doubt the climate has changed for journalists. The leading cause of death among journalists on assignments in the past few years is murder. It does make me worried and I have to be much more careful when I travel now than in the past."
Amanpour cites the war in Bosnia as the most significant of her career. Faced with genocide and western leaders who were reluctant to intervene, news reporters kept telling the story until the world took notice.
"I know that the power of well-told news is phenomenal because all of us showed that in Bosnia. We didn't have an agenda; we just put the pictures on air of the terrible things that were being done to human beings. [Former British prime minister] Blair, [former US president Bill] Clinton and the others intervened much quicker in Kosovo than they would have done because they didn't want to have to face more pictures of Muslims being slaughtered. Some people accused me of being pro-Muslim in Bosnia but I realized that our job is to give all sides an equal hearing, but in cases of genocide you can't just be neutral. You can't just say, 'Well this little boy was shot in the head and killed in besieged Sarajevo and that guy over there did it but maybe he was upset because he had an argument with his wife.' No, there is no equality there and we had to tell the truth."
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