It was a passion born of his own experience as a hostage during the Iranian embassy siege in London in 1980. Cramer was in the embassy obtaining a visa when gunmen stormed Ayatollah Khomeini. After 24 hours as a hostage, he told the gunmen he was unwell, and was released. He left to provide important information to the authorities on the layout of the embassy, the number of armed men and hostages.
It was an experience he later realized he had traumatized in ways he did not understand at the time, and when his career as a news boss began, he remembered the consequences, long before PTSD became a familiar term for soldiers. . and others.
In January 2004, I was trapped in a two-car CNN convoy led by insurgents just south of Baghdad. One of our two drivers and my translator were killed, and my photographer sitting next to me survived it and shot me in the head. We were all almost dead that day.
It was Cramer, then executive vice president and managing director of CNN International, who knew exactly what those of us who had survived went through and acted accordingly.
He then set up a system in the company where staff could get professional help if needed after a traumatic incident, but on that day it was important that we meet on a personal level our need for another week living together in Iraq had to keep processing the experience and attending funerals, rather than leaving immediately for our respective scattered homes.
“Among his many accomplishments, Chris was a pioneer and innovator in field safety as the world became more dangerous to journalists,” Cramer’s successor to CNN International Tony Maddox said, going further and expanding what Cramer started.
“He has led to the development of guidelines and practices that are currently applied throughout the industry.”
I will always remember and thank Cramer’s empathy for those who have seen and experienced terrible things for it. He knew from experience what it was like. I have been to Iraq 17 times during the war and also covered conflict – from Afghanistan to Libya to Gaza and the West Bank – and I have always felt that Chris has our backs with the best possible security and support, tangible and emotional.
Before joining CNN in April 1996, Cramer spent 25 years with the BBC. He was head of the news conference and sat on the BBC’s Executive Board for News and Current Affairs, and was highly regarded by those he worked with.
He was also president and founding member of the International News Safety Institute (INSI) – a global organization dedicated to the safety of journalists.
As the news of Cramer’s passing spread, those who worked with him began to share their memories of the man and his impact on their careers.
Octavia Nasr was CNN’s senior editor of Middle East Affairs, a position Cramer created after the Sept. 11 attacks. “Chris was a wonderful boss,” she recalls.
“I will never forget the lessons I learned from him to be direct and fight for his rights – he supported women in senior and executive positions and helped us to be successful. I owe him gratitude and respect and I like his journalistic ethics and sense of humor. ‘
Chris can be many things – sometimes on the same day or within the same meeting. Tough, blunt and uncompromising, but also charming and wickedly funny. And most of all, he cared a lot about journalists and good journalism.
He was definitely one of a kind and he will be greatly missed.