Early career

In 1975, Garrels worked for the ABC television network in several positions for ten years, including as producer—one of the few women broadcast journalists at the time.^[1][3][5][6]

She served ABC in the Soviet Union as Moscow bureau chief and correspondent until she was expelled in 1982. Able to speak Russian, and "in love" with the country, she was noted for more in-depth reporting from that country than most other U.S. journalists. She interviewed prominent Soviet dissidents Andrei Sakharov, Roy Medvedev, and Sergei Kovalyov. Her reporting exposed numerous hardships of Soviet citizens, displeasing the Soviet government, resulting in her 1982 expulsion. She did not return until 1988, just before the collapse of the Soviet Union.^{[1][2][3][5][6]}

As ABC's Central American bureau chief from 1984 to 1985, she covered the wars in Nicaragua and El Salvador.^[1][2][3]

Garrels was the NBC News correspondent at the U.S. State Department.^[3][6]

In mid-1988, Garrels hosted Science Journal, a 25-part weekly news series on science, medicine and technology, at WETA-TV, and aired by PBS. It was the first such television series of its kind, with panel discussions among experts and journalists.^[7][8] However, Garrels' workload at National Public Radio (particularly as State Department correspondent), and a family illness, forced her to withdraw from the program that November.^[9]

NPR career

Garrels joined NPR in 1988 and reported on conflicts in Chechnya, Bosnia, Kosovo, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Israel, the West Bank, and Iraq.^[2][10] She also reported from China (and covered the Tiananmen Square Protests) and Saudi Arabia. She returned to Russia in 1988, as the Soviet Union began to collapse, and from 1993 until 1997 was NPR's Moscow bureau chief.^[6][5][11]

Garrels was the Edward R. Murrow Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations in 1996,^[2][12] and was a member of the board of the Committee to Protect Journalists from 1999 until her death in 2022.^[2][10][12] She also served on the board of Oxfam America.^[6]

Following the 9/11 attacks on the U.S., in September 2001, and during the subsequent U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, Garrels spent several months in northern Afghanistan with the Northern Alliance, and in or around Kabul, also traveling to Pakistan and Israel in early 2002.^[4]

Shortly before the U.S. and its coalition invaded Iraq in 2003, Garrels traveled there. and was one of the sixteen Western journalists who remained in Baghdad, and reported live during the 2003 Iraq War^{[2][4][3][13]}—and for a while was the only American broadcast reporter still broadcasting from the middle of Baghdad.^[1][6][14] Garrels survived the April 8, 2003, U.S. tank attack on the Palestine Hotel, where she and hundreds of other journalists were living.^[15][16]

Following the April 8, 2003, U.S. bombing of the Al Jazeera office in Baghdad, which killed journalist Tareq Ayyoub ("Tariq/Tareq Ayoub"),^[15][17] Garrels reportedly said that Ayyoub should have known better than to be in his office during the invasion—a comment that raised angry responses from some in the international journalism community, who accused her of "blaming the victim."^[18]

Shortly after her return from Iraq, she published Naked in Baghdad (2003, Farrar, Straus, and Giroux), a memoir of her time covering the events surrounding the invasion.^[10][19][16] She subsequently returned to Iraq several times for NPR. She was an embedded reporter with the U.S. Marines during the November 2004 attack on Fallujah.^[20] Garrels also covered the January 2005 Iraqi national elections for an interim government, as well as constitutional referendum and the December 2005 elections for the first full term Iraqi government. As sectarian violence swept much of central Iraq Garrels continued to report from Baghdad, Najaf^[21] and Basra.

In 2007 Garrels was criticized by FAIR for using confessions by prisoners who had been tortured, during a story about an Iraqi Shiite militia (broadcast on NPR's Morning Edition).^[22] Garrels later defended her story on NPR's Letters program, saying: "Of course, I had doubts. But the details that were given seemed to me to gel with other things that I had heard from people who had not been tortured. But I was as uncomfortable as the listeners were with the conditions."^[23]

Garrels retired from NPR in 2010.^[24]

Late career

Garrels continued her work with the Committee to Protect Journalists until the end of her life, serving on its board of directors.^[2][10][12]

In 2016, she published her second book, Putin Country: A Journey into the Real Russia, with Farrar, Straus, and Giroux.^[1]

Toward the end of her life, Garrels served as a judge for the Overseas Press Club Awards, including the Lowell Thomas Award which she judged in 2021.^[25][26]

After the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, Garrels, then 70 years old and undergoing treatment for cancer, approached NPR about coming out of retirement to cover the conflict. While her offer was declined, she started a non-profit organization, Assist-Ukraine, to raise money to support Ukraine and victims of the war, particularly medical supplies,^[1][5][27] reportedly raising US$1 million for the cause.^[28]

Books

• Naked in Baghdad: The Iraq War as Seen by NPR's Correspondent, 2002, Farrar, Straus and Giroux (account of her 5 years as a radio correspondent in Iraq) (Excerpts at: Neiman Reports, Harvard University^[16])
• Putin Country: A Journey into the Real Russia, 2016, Farrar, Straus and Giroux (study of Russian public, during the era of Vladimir Putin, particularly in Chelyabinsk, Russia)^[46]

Films

• Journalist: Killed in the Line of Duty, - Co-narrator, with Christiane Amanpour, Tom Brokaw, Walter Cronkite, Peter Jennings and Dan Rather (director: Steven Rosenbaum; host: Anderson Cooper)^[47]

Television programs

• Science Journal, 25-part weekly news series on science, medicine and technology, 1988, WETA-TV / PBS^[7][8]