Tony Burman still remembers the words Nelson Mandela said to him twelve years ago. The date was February 11, 1990, and Mandela had just been released from prison after spending 27 years in jail. The CBC was one of the few international news organizations given the opportunity to interview the man who would later become the president of South Africa. Burman remembers Mandela quizzed the members of the CBC team about their experience as journalists. He told Mandela about reporting in the Middle East and expressed his doubts about whether or not the conflict in the region would ever come to an end.
“That is what they said about South Africa, but we changed,” said Mandela, “The Middle East will change because it has to.”
Speaking to a room of Ryerson University students Wednesday night, Burman spoke about his lengthy career in journalism as the former head of Al Jazeera English and CBC News. An award-winning journalist and news executive for over 35 years (spending the last five in Doha, Qatar and Washington, D.C.), Burman has been recognized internationally as one of the leading experts on the media and its coverage of international affairs.
Initially launched as an Arabic current affairs and satellite TV channel in 1996, Al Jazeera is broadcast to approximately 250 million households in 100 countries today, with 70 news bureaus and 400 reporters worldwide. Though it became a household name after 9/11 and its reportage on Osama Bin Laden and al-Qaeda–not to mention being publicly denounced on multiple occasions by President Bush, Vice President Cheney and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfield–Burman insists that the network’s goal has always been “to be the voice of the voiceless.” During last year’s uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia, Al Jazeera provided essential coverage of the events. “Revolutions can be contagious, but never so like this,” says Burman, citing the value of Facebook and Twitter.“Within the Arab world, social media is not a distraction for entertainment or shopping, it’s a matter of life and death,” he says.
Largely because of Al Jazeera English, North Americans were able to see footage of protesters on the streets and the celebrations after Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak was forced to resign. Despite their offices and reporters being frequently targeted for attack and arrest by governments, military forces and rebels, the channel was praised by everyone from other news organizations to U.S. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton. According to its supporters, and various surveys that have been conducted, Al Jazeera reports on events in the Middle East in a more in-depth way than British and American news outlets.
While he admitted a lack of resources has made it difficult for North American news organizations to cover international stories, Burman also said that the public shouldn’t accept this as an excuse. He pointed to the hundreds of journalists covering the royal wedding and the fact that U.S. networks such as CBS and Disney-ABC posting huge yearly earnings post-recession as proof that not all coverage is considered equal. “It’s a question of choices,” he says, “There’s more of a demand for higher quality international coverage in Canada than the United States.”
Ending on a hopeful note, Burman told the story of Birhan Woldu, the three-year-old girl he found while shooting a CBC documentary about the famine in Ethiopia with Brian Stewart in 1984. Her family had walked from their village to the city of Mek’ele, but her sister had not survived the trip and Birhan and her mother had fallen very ill. Nurses told Biryan’s father that she probably would not live, so he began digging her grave. Before he could bury her though, he noticed a pulse, and the nurses were able to revive her.
The CBC’s coverage was picked up by other networks and Woldu became the “face” of the 1984-1985 Ethiopian Famine which inspired a huge out-pouring of international relief. British Prime Minister Tony Blair said the image of her face “changed his life” and it inspired Bob Geldof to write the single “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” and organize the Live Aid concert. Recently Burman spoke with Woldu, who is now her in her late-twenties, has graduated from college and is working as a nurse, with her first child on the way.
“She told me that it wasn’t for the determination of everyday Canadians and the media, not counting on governments and putting aside ideological differences, she wouldn’t be alive today.”
Max Mertens is a freelance Toronto journalist who writes about arts and culture, food and journalism. Follow him on twitter: @Max_Mertens.
