PERSON: Ben Wedeman

Senior International Correspondent

Benjamin C. Wedeman (born September 1, 1960) is an American journalist and war correspondent. He is a CNN senior international correspondent based in Rome. He has been with the network since 1994, and has earned multiple Emmy Awards and Edward R. Murrow Awards for team reporting.

Wedeman’s father, Miles G. Wedeman (January 23, 1923 – October 23, 2013), was a diplomat and civil servant from Pennsylvania. He was a devout Quaker. His mother, Martha Jean (née Hall) Wedeman was a reporter for The Washington Post.

Wedeman spent most of his childhood outside the United States, after having moved with his family to South Korea in 1968. Subsequently, the family moved to Bangkok and Phnom Penh, Cambodia (during the Cambodian Civil War). His father also served in Ivory Coast and Syria working for USAID.

Wedeman attended boarding schools in Beirut, Lebanon (in 1974–75, just as the civil war broke out); Tangier, Morocco; and Windsor, Connecticut. He graduated from the University of Texas at Austin with a bachelor’s degree in Asiatic Languages and Linguistics in 1982 and from the University of London’s School of Oriental and African Studies with a master’s degree in Middle Eastern Studies.

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