Joseph Ataman is a field producer for CNN based in the network’s Paris bureau.

From the frontlines of Ukraine to the voting booths of Tehran, Ataman has reported on the people and events behind some of the most important stories in recent years.

Ataman led CNN’s coverage of the 2022 French election, and has written and field produced the network’s coverage of the rebuilding of Notre Dame, the rise of the far-right, the last major D-day commemorations, the Channel migrant crisis, wildfires and the climate crisis.

Over more than a month on Ukraine’s frontlines in the winter of 2024, he reported on the brutal tactics and human toll that Russia’s invasion was wreaking on Ukrainians in trenches and at home.

He covered the wounds and destruction that followed the October 7 attacks and war in Gaza and, as one of the few Western journalists reporting from Iran, their wider reverberations.

He’s most at home putting our world - its scenes and our sentiments - into words.

Ataman began working at CNN on the international video team, shooting and producing stories from across Europe, covering Covid-19’s first wave - including its uniquely painful effect on children - Brexit and the First World War centenary.

Prior to this, he worked as a freelance journalist in Lebanon, Turkey and Iraq.

Ataman earned a first-class degree in Geography from the University of Cambridge and was a Fulbright Scholar at Harvard University during his Master’s degree in Middle Eastern Studies. He speaks French and Turkish.