Iranian immigrant is Ohio’s most decorated cameraman
CLEVELAND — Ali Ghanbari was just a boy, about 5 years old and growing up in Iran, when his father gave him his first camera.
“It was a small, funky camera that you could shoot and then throw away,” he recalls.
Ghanbari had no idea then that 65 years later he would be looking back at a career that made him the most decorated photojournalist in Ohio television history.
His name might not ring a bell, but Ghanbari has been behind the camera covering stories big and small as a news photographer at WJW Fox 8 for 26 years.
When he retired this month, he had amassed over 600 awards from professional journalism organizations.
“I always had a passion for photography,” Ghanbari says, thinking about that first camera.
“We already miss not only his work, but having him as part of our newsroom,” says Fox 8 Vice President/news Director Andy Fishman.
How Ghanbari got to this point is as interesting as any story he’s covered in his nearly 40 years in the TV news business.
It begins in the mid-1970s, when a young Ghanbari, a chief petty officer in the Shah of Iran’s navy, was deployed to the United States to train alongside the U.S. Navy.
Along the way, he met a woman from Cincinnati who later became his wife. When the Iranian Revolution began, Ghanbari knew it wouldn’t be safe for the couple to return to his home country. So they settled in Dayton and started a family.
During his time in the Iranian navy, Ghanbari also served as the ship’s photographer, snapping photos of the vessel when it arrived at different ports and of officers and dignitaries that came aboard.
The experience helped him land his first job in the television industry as a part-time videographer at WKEF-TV in Dayton in 1982. But it didn’t pay well, so he also had a full-time gig at a Honda distribution center stocking car parts.
Determined to get better at his craft so his “hobby” could become a career, he carefully and intensely studied the work of the best photographers in the business and entered contests to see how his skills measured up.
“When I was a kid, my dad bought a TV/VHS combo pack,” recalls Ghanbari’s son, Haraz, himself a former photojournalist who worked in the White House press corps for the Associated Press. “He put it in the basement and watched these VHS tapes of contest judgings from across the country. He would study those and study those and study those.”
Ghanbari also tried a broadcasting trade school in Dayton.
“But right away they told me I don’t have to go through the course because I knew a lot more than some of the people over there,” he says, humbly.
The self-taught, still part-time photojournalist started racking up awards, including his first Photographer of the Year award from the Ohio News Photographers
Association in 1993.
Offers for full-time jobs poured in. Ghanbari opted to stay in Ohio and moved to Cleveland to join WJW in 1994.
“Marty Savidge, who’s on CNN now, was there when I came on, so we were hooked up together a lot,” he remembers fondly. “We did a story about the FBI, so we spent a couple days with them in Virginia and did some other stories at the White House.”
Among his most memorable assignments, Ghanbari recalls traveling to Austria for a story about a Holocaust survivor. He remembers being embedded for 24 hours with the Society of the Honor Guard, who stand watch at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Another favorite is “Happy Feet,” a story he shot and edited about a Lakewood math teacher who was born without arms.
“Every one of them, I tried to do the best I could,” he says.
It’s not an easy job. The gear is heavy and you often have to figure out how to get to a spot where you’re not really supposed to be. And the calls from the assignment desk can be relentless at times.
Ghanbari recalls one particular day in 2010 when he was asked to cover an early-morning shooting on the East Side, then head to City Hall for a news conference. From there, it was to the airport where President Obama was arriving for a visit, then heading back downtown to Progressive Field for pre-game interviews — all before the 6 p.m. newscast.
“It was always interesting and you never do the same story twice,” he says.
“It was never boring for me.”
No matter how ordinary or extraordinary the story, Ghanbari’s approach was the same.
Longtime Fox 8 sports anchor John Telich says “I have never gone out to shoot a story with Ali over all these years where he wasn’t totally engaged and passionate about telling the story in the most visually vibrant way. We used to joke with him by saying, ‘Ali, are you going out to make a movie?’ But each story was, in a way, a little production with the best looking shots, told in the most interesting way. His stuff just popped off the screen.”
Fishman, the news director, calls Ghanbari “a master storyteller.”
Indeed, Ghanbari became known for telling stories in a series of award-winning photo essays and natural sound packages — stories told by the subject themselves without a reporter. He won so many regional Emmy awards — 28, with most of them for individual achievement — that he started giving them away to the people featured in the story.
“I’m an immigrant to this country. When I give my award to somebody, they’re going to look at it 20-30 years from now and say this guy Ali gave this to me. That’s more rewarding for me than to keep a trophy in my house.”
“He’s a perfect example of pursuing the American Dream,” says Haraz, who now serves in the Ohio House of Representatives. “He came here with essentially nothing, raised a family here, worked and became very well known in the journalism world. He inspired me.”