Paris-based reporter John Leicester, video journalist Alex Turnbull, stringer photographer Laurent Cipriani and freelance video journalist Antony Cerrone set a new standard for The AP Interview, thanks to a 3-year source-building effort that persuaded Grace Meng, wife of the ex-Interpol boss jailed in China, to go on camera and go public with her story for the first time.
Then-Interpol President Meng Hongwei delivers his opening address at the Interpol World Congress, in Singapore, July 4, 2017.
AP Photo / Wong Maye-E
When Meng revealed in 2018 that her husband, Meng Hongwei, was missing in China, Leicester was the only Chinese speaker among reporters in the room. Leicester saw a unique and untold story: that of a former insider among China’s secretive governing elite whose powerful husband had fallen afoul of the Communist Party, with its long and brutal history of political purges. “The monster” is how Meng now speaks of the government her husband worked for. “Because they eat their children.”
Tiptoeing around the interview room in Lyon, France, Cipriani captured the range of emotions expressed by Meng, while Turnbull, collaborating with Cerrone, raised the bar for the interview series with his masterclass camerawork. Luke Sheridan in New York turned around the edited, branded video so quickly that the package was available in all formats almost immediately.
The video was by far the most impactful segment of The AP Interview on AP’s YouTube channel to date, and the story was No.1 for the week in reader engagement.