Mary C. "Molly" Bingham is an American journalist and filmmaker.

Early life

Molly Bingham grew up in

Louisville, Kentucky Louisville ( , , ) is the largest city in the Commonwealth of Kentucky and the 28th most-populous city in the United States. Louisville is the historical seat and, since 2003, the nominal seat of Jefferson County, on the Indiana border ...

and went to Brooks School in

North Andover North Andover is an affluent town in Essex County, Massachusetts, United States. At the 2020 census the population was 30,915. History Native Americans inhabited what is now northeastern Massachusetts for thousands of years prior to European c ...

, Massachusetts, before getting her BA in 1990 at

Harvard College Harvard College is the undergraduate college of Harvard University, an Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636, Harvard College is the original school of Harvard University, the oldest institution of higher lea ...

in Medieval European History. In 1993 she traveled to

Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world, with its internationally recognised territory covering , and encompassing one-eig ...

and

Tibet Tibet (; ''Böd''; ) is a region in East Asia, covering much of the Tibetan Plateau and spanning about . It is the traditional homeland of the Tibetan people. Also resident on the plateau are some other ethnic groups such as Monpa, Taman ...

and produced a portfolio from those trips that she showed to magazine and newspaper photo editors.

Career as a Journalist

In 1994 she traveled to Rwanda to cover ongoing events after the

genocide Genocide is the intentional destruction of a people—usually defined as an ethnic, national, racial, or religious group—in whole or in part. Raphael Lemkin coined the term in 1944, combining the Greek word (, "race, people") with the Lat ...

. From that time until 1998, Bingham focused her work on central Africa, including Rwanda, Burundi and the Congo (then called Zaire). In addition to working as a journalist, Bingham has worked on three projects with

Human Rights Watch Human Rights Watch (HRW) is an international non-governmental organization, headquartered in New York City, that conducts research and advocacy on human rights. The group pressures governments, policy makers, companies, and individual human r ...

over the years, one in Burundi, one on small arms trafficking in the Great Lakes region of central Africa and later a short emergency project in

Sierra Leone Sierra Leone,)]. officially the Republic of Sierra Leone, is a country on the southwest coast of West Africa. It is bordered by Liberia to the southeast and Guinea surrounds the northern half of the nation. Covering a total area of , Sierr ...

. In August 1998 Bingham began work as official photographer to the vice president at the

White House The White House is the official residence and workplace of the president of the United States. It is located at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, D.C., and has been the residence of every U.S. president since John Adams in ...

, a job documenting the life of the vice president that she continued until January 2001. Bingham returned to Africa in the spring of 2001, working on a story for the ''

New York Times Sunday Magazine ''The New York Times Magazine'' is an American Sunday magazine supplement included with the Sunday edition of ''The New York Times''. It features articles longer than those typically in the newspaper and has attracted many notable contributors. ...

'' on the mining of the mineral

coltan Coltan (short for columbite–tantalites and known industrially as tantalite) is a dull black metallic ore from which the elements niobium and tantalum are extracted. The niobium-dominant mineral in coltan is columbite (after niobium's original ...

that is used to coat computer chips. On

September 11th, 2001 The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commer ...

, Bingham was in western

Virginia Virginia, officially the Commonwealth of Virginia, is a state in the Mid-Atlantic and Southeastern regions of the United States, between the Atlantic Coast and the Appalachian Mountains. The geography and climate of the Commonwealth ar ...

on a training course for journalists, but returned to

Washington, D.C. ) , image_skyline = , image_caption = Clockwise from top left: the Washington Monument and Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall, United States Capitol, Logan Circle, Jefferson Memorial, White House, Adams Morgan, ...

to photograph

the Pentagon The Pentagon is the headquarters building of the United States Department of Defense. It was constructed on an accelerated schedule during World War II. As a symbol of the U.S. military, the phrase ''The Pentagon'' is often used as a meton ...

and the feeling in the capital in the wake of the attacks for the New Yorker. Post 9/11 Bingham has spent time in

Afghanistan Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,; prs, امارت اسلامی افغانستان is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. Referred to as the Heart of Asia, it is bordere ...

, the

Gaza Strip The Gaza Strip (;The New Oxford Dictionary of English (1998) – p.761 "Gaza Strip /'gɑːzə/ a strip of territory under the control of the Palestinian National Authority and Hamas, on the SE Mediterranean coast including the town of Gaza.. ...

Iran Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkmeni ...

and fourteen months in

Iraq Iraq,; ku, عێراق, translit=Êraq officially the Republic of Iraq, '; ku, کۆماری عێراق, translit=Komarî Êraq is a country in Western Asia. It is bordered by Turkey to the north, Iran to the east, the Persian Gulf and K ...

. During the 2004–05 academic year Bingham won a mid-career

Nieman Fellowship The Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University awards multiple types of fellowships. Nieman Fellowships for journalists A Nieman Fellowship is an award given to journalists by the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University ...

Harvard University Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of high ...

and in 2011 was a Sulzberger Fellow at Columbia University. Bingham has won several awards including

Pictures of the Year Pictures of the Year International (POYi) is a professional development program for visual journalists run on a non-profit basis by the Missouri School of Journalism's Donald W. Reynolds Journalism Institute. POYi began as an annual competition ...

awards for her photography and an honorable mention from the

Overseas Press Club The Overseas Press Club of America (OPC) was founded in 1939 in New York City by a group of foreign correspondents. The wire service reporter Carol Weld was a founding member, as was the war correspondent Peggy Hull. The club seeks to maintain ...

for her story, "Ordinary Warriors: The Iraqi Resistance" that ran in the July 2004 issue of '' Vanity Fair''. Bingham has given numerous talks at universities, on television and radio and is additionally one of five women journalists featured in the documentary '' Bearing Witness'' screened on A&E in May 2005. Bingham was named one of "20 Women to Watch" by The Columbia Journalism Review in July 2012. Bingham co-directed and produced the documentary film '' Meeting Resistance'' with journalist Steve Connors. The film was reported over ten months in Baghdad in 2003 and 2004, and features interviews with Iraqis (and one Syrian) directly involved in the violent resistance to the occupation of the country. ''Meeting Resistance'' opened in theatres in the U.S. in the fall of 2007 and was released on DVD the following year. The film has subsequently been invited to screen around the world at universities, community groups and film festivals, as well as for US military audiences—including

Baghdad Baghdad (; ar, بَغْدَاد , ) is the capital of Iraq and the second-largest city in the Arab world after Cairo. It is located on the Tigris near the ruins of the ancient city of Babylon and the Sassanid Persian capital of Ctesiphon. I ...

where the directors were brought to how the film to military and diplomatic audiences. The film won the "Golden Prize" at the Al Jazeera Film Festival among others and Bingham and Connors traveled extensively for sixteen months in support of the film and talking about their understanding of and experience in Iraq and how that knowledge translated into current events. Bingham has expanded her work from photography to include writing and filmmaking. Her written work has been published in Vanity Fair,

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...

Nieman Reports The Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard University is the primary journalism institution at Harvard. It was founded in February 1938 as the result of a $1.4 million bequest by Agnes Wahl Nieman, the widow of Lucius W. Nieman, founder of ...

and other online and print publications. After her Nieman Fellowship Bingham began considering the changes necessary within the structure of journalism to bring it into the current age. In 2009 she set up a site called "Transforming the Media" as a way to articulate her thinking on the media and interact with others on media issues.

Recent work

Molly is currently president and CEO of Orb Media, a non-profit journalism organization whose research and global reporting produces stories that matter to billions of people around the world. Orb simultaneously publishes with members of its Orb Media Network, a group of the world's agenda setting media, reaching audiences in 180+ countries. By working this way Orb's journalism catalyzes global dialogue, generating change. Bingham is a trustee of ''The Listen Campaign'', a UK charity that campaigns for the needs and rights of the world's most vulnerable children, and on the advisory board of the Kentucky Center for Investigative Reporting, a nonprofit, nonpartisan newsroom focused on investigative journalism based in Louisville, KY.

External links

"ORBmedia"
Official Website

Official website for Meeting Resistance *

Video

Interview with Bingham and Connors
from ''Democracy Now!'' program, October 18, 2007

published on the New York Times website on October 16, 2007

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Bingham, Molly Harvard College alumni Living people Molly Journalists from Kentucky Writers from Louisville, Kentucky American documentary filmmakers Kentucky women writers American women non-fiction writers American women documentary filmmakers Year of birth missing (living people) 21st-century American women