Bio
Lisa Ling is an American journalist best known for as co-host of ABC's The View (1999-2002), host of National Geographic Channel's Explorer, reporter on Channel One News, and special correspondent for the Oprah Winfrey Show and CNN.
Ling started in television when she was chosen as one of the four hosts of Scratch, a nationally-syndicated teen magazine show based in Sacramento.
At 18, she joined Channel One News as one of their youngest reporters and anchors. Among her roles was war correspondent, including assignments in Iraq and Afghanistan.
She has won numerous awards for her reporting. She attended the University of Southern California.
Ling joined The View on August 2, 1999, and left the show towards the end of 2002 to go back to international reporting. She drew fire for her comments after the September 11 attacks, in which she said that Americans should think about why other people would want to attack them.
She accepted an offer to host National Geographic Ultimate Explorer and in 2005 the show moved to the National Geographic Channel with the return of the original name National Geographic Explorer.
She covered the drug war in Colombia, investigated the notorious MS-13 gang and explored the culture of U.S. prisons.
Subsequently Ling has become a special correspondent for The Oprah Winfrey Show which has featured many of Ling's investigative pieces, including a report on North Korea. Ling's title is "Oprah Show Investigative Reporter."
She has also reported on bride burning in India, gang rape in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the Lord's Resistance Army in Uganda, child trafficking in Ghana, the immediate aftermath of the hurricane in New Orleans and the April 2007 Virginia Tech Massacre.