Leslie Corkill Redlich Cockburn (/ˈkoʊbərn/ KOH-bərn; born September 2, 1952) is an American writer and filmmaker who has covered a wide variety of international stories in almost every part of the globe. Read full biography of Leslie Cockburn →
When you have a situation that's destructive, when there's tremendous inhumanity everywhere, you see how humanity survives in all of its... →
I covered the first Gulf War in Saudi Arabia and Israel for ABC News.
I think the greatest thing about making a documentary is your ability to just follow the story and the subject.
Journalism, for me, has always been a calling. There are things that must be exposed to the light, truths that must be uncovered, stories worth... →
When you are on assignment, you stick to the facts, limit your vision, and often cut out the most revealing material. There is no texture, no shades... →
After reading Graham Greene and Joseph Conrad when I was a student at Yale, I wanted to live in the world they captured in their books. I had had... →
I started making little films with a 16 mm camera as an undergraduate at Yale. My first job out of college was 'assistant editor' on a... →
I have a great spouse, Andrew Cockburn, who's also a journalist.
In documentary films, the most difficult thing to achieve is to make something complex appear simple.
It's a very enclosed world on Wall Street.
When I was at graduate school in London, I began working at NBC News, which had a thriving documentary unit.
When I was in London at NBC, I was the lowest man on the totem pole. I would go to diplomatic receptions to meet people.
When you do a piece of journalism, you may have to cut away 95 percent of what you are experiencing.