Ling, Lisa

Lisa Ling, (born August 30, 1973, Sacramento, California, U.S.), American journalist and television personality who cohosted (1999–2002) The View, a daytime talk show on ABC, and who later was involved in a number of documentary series.

Ling grew up in Sacramento, California. At age 16 she became one of the hosts of Scratch, an adolescent news program that was syndicated nationwide. Two years later, she joined Channel One News, a youth-oriented news network shown in many American middle schools and high schools. One of the channel’s youngest reporters, she corresponded from some two dozen countries, becoming the network’s senior war correspondent at age 25. While working for Channel One, Ling attended the University of Southern California.

In 1999 Ling joined The View; she left the show in 2002 to pursue a reporting career. She produced several documentaries, which aired on the Los Angeles public television station KCET. In 2005 she became a cohost of the National Geographic cable television series National Geographic Explorer. In that same year she began working as a special correspondent and investigative reporter for the Oprah Winfrey Show; she continued with the program until it ended in 2011. Ling hosted Who Cares About Little Girls, a series on the Oxygen Network that examined issues faced by girls throughout the world. In addition, she served as a contributing reporter for the Cable News Network (CNN), and the documentary series This Is Life with Lisa Ling premiered on that channel in 2014 and ran until 2022. Ling also hosted the six-part docuseries Take Out (2022), which explores Asian American cuisine and history; it aired on HBO Max. Mother, Daughter, Sister, Bride: Rituals of Womanhood, which she authored with Joanne Bubolz Eicher, was published in 2005.

In 2009 journalist Laura Ling, Lisa’s sister, was imprisoned in North Korea for several months, convicted of illegally entering the country, and the two later wrote Somewhere Inside: One Sister’s Captivity in North Korea and the Other’s Fight to Bring Her Home (2010).