Lisa Ling former co-host for The View: Host of Who Cares About Girls

Imagine facing a 10-year-old boy carrying an anti-tank missile pointed directly at you or going undercover in North Korea, where very few foreigners are allowed and any communication with the outside world prohibited. It’s all in a day’s work for 33-year-old award-winning journalist Lisa Ling. Covering stories like bride burning in India is a far cry from her former day job as co-host on the hit gabfest The View, but, as a special correspondent for The Oprah Winfrey Show and the National Geographic Channel, Ling eagerly goes around the globe to bring vital stories much of the world ignores.

We caught up with Ling right before she trotted off to a three o’clock showing of German film Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others) to talk about her life’s work as a journalist and her latest venture, the new Oxygen documentary series Who Cares About Girls?

SM: What inspired you to be a journalist?

Lisa Ling: It wasn’t until I started working in Channel One News [network seen in middle and high schools across the country where Ling became one of youngest reporters at age 18 and senior war correspondent before 25] that I really got the travel bug and the opportunity to see the world. As a young journalist, I covered so many stories that were eye-opening, disturbing and important.