Lisa Ling Covered the World’s Darkest Stories
By Kelli Luu | 16 Apr, 2026

The Chinese American journalist has criss-crossed the world covering harsh global realities and uncovering stories overlooked by others.

Lisa Ling has become one of the most respected journalists in the United States by building a career covering the stories other people were too afraid to tell. 

She was born in Sacramento to Chinese and Taiwanese immigrants and was primarily raised by her father after her parent’s divorce. Living in a single parent household with a younger sister forced her to become independent early and like other Asian American kids, she felt like didn’t fully belong in her community. This feeling is what would later become her greatest strength. 

When Ling was 16, she began gaining experience hosting a teen news program and by the time she was 18, she already had a gig secured at Channel One News as one of their youngest reporters. Among her roles here, she was assigned to report from warzones in Iraq and Afghanistan and even won several awards for her journalism skills. 

In 1999, Ling beat out 12,000 other auditionees looking to score the role as co-host on The View and while the platform largely increased her fanbase, she decided it wasn’t enough after nearly four years. She went back to what she did best, international reporting. In 2005, Ling accepted an offer with National Geographic. During her time here, she covered the drug war in Colombia, investigated the MS-13 gang, documented prison culture in the U.S, and traveled to North Korea for a special “Inside North Korea” documentary. 

Lisa Ling later became a correspondent for The Oprah Winfrey Show where she uncovered global tragedies such as bride burning in India and child trafficking in Ghana. Despite all of the horrific stories Ling covered, one of the scariest moments in her life didn’t happen on air. In 2009, her younger sister and fellow journalist, Laura Ling, was captured by North Korean soldiers while reporting near the China-North Korea border. Laura Ling and her colleague were sentenced to 12 years of hard labor and from there, Lisa Ling went from talking about global crises to experiencing one herself. 

For months, Lisa Ling worked behind the scenes, doing everything she could to bring her sister home. The story became international and drew attention to the dangers that journalists face in the field. Laura Ling was finally released after 140 days after a high-profile mission led by former President Bill Clinton. This experience fully changed Lisa’s life giving her a much deeper understanding of the human cost behind the stories she had covered throughout her career. 

More recently in 2019 Lisa announced a partnership with HBO Max where she is currently working on a series titled Birth, Wedding, Funeral. In 2022 she and HBO released a six-part documentary called Take Out, which explores the world of Asian America’s takeout restaurants and spotlights those who keep them running. 

Today Lisa Ling is still considered one of the most impressive and respected voices in journalism, not because she reported alarming global tragedies, but because she made the world care about them and fully understand the realities.