Profile: Ellen Barry

Credit: The New York Times Company

‘We have to fight for legitimacy in this environment’

Ellen Barry is the Chief International Correspondent for The New York Times based in London. She has had an extraordinary career working as the Bureau Chief for both the Moscow and South Asia editions of the newspaper covering social issues such as immigration, demographics and culture across Europe.

In 2017, her in-depth articles on women’s role in India’s workforce got her the Asia Society’s Osborn Elliott Prize for Excellence in Journalism in Asia. Barry has previously won the 2011 Pulitzer Prize for international reporting for a series on impunity in Russia’s justice system.

‘The truth is that you can see much more with your own eyes than you could even imagine’, she says, ‘and one is being able to witness - particularly for a foreign correspondent - the important processes that are transforming our society.’

When discussing about the main differences between the American and the European journalistic styles, Barry says: ‘There is a little bit more transparency on the US government side, in the sense that there is a strong culture of anonymous briefings here (in the UK) and in the US you just wouldn’t find that.’ She also says that the libel law represents a huge difference which allows American newspapers to be a lot more aggressive when reporting allegations.

Barry says that activists within Parliament have led to similarities between Brexit and Trump’s election. ‘These are two kind of twin democracies. We’re definitely on a period of extreme flux. I was really struck that our government was in shutdown while yours (UK) was in gridlock.’