Tony Burman (born 13 June 1948) is a Canadian broadcaster, journalist and university official. Starting in the 1960s, Burman has worked as a journalist, in print, radio, television, and online. For most of this time (35 years), he was at the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. Later he joined Al Jazeera English. He is also active in supporting public broadcasting and investigative journalism.
From 2002 to 2007, he was the editor in chief of CBC News. He also served as managing director of the Al Jazeera English network, based in Doha, Qatar, from 2008 to 2010. Burman served as Al Jazeera's chief strategic advisor for the Americas, 2010–2011, based in Washington DC. Starting in 2011, Burman served as the Velma Rogers Graham Research Chair at Ryerson University in Toronto, Ontario, Canada.
In October 2007, Burman received the Academy of Canadian Cinema and Television's Gordon Sinclair Award for lifetime achievement in broadcast journalism. In October 2009, Arabian Business magazine named him the second most influential non-Arab in the Arab world. Then, in November 2009, the Canadian Expat Association also announced that he had been voted the third most influential Canadian living abroad, behind Michael J. Fox and Wayne Gretzky.
Career
As a student in the 1960s, Burman edited two school newspapers at Concordia University), one of which was the Loyola News (now The Concordian (Montreal)). In that role, most notably, he was called upon by the Canadian University Press to investigate the circumstances surrounding the resignations of the editors of the University of Windsor's student paper, the Lance, who had reprinted a controversial essay comparing the status of students at California State University and the status of African Americans in society. His commission concluded the university administration had interfered with the independence of the newspaper and forced the editors out: "the concept of freedom of the press at Windsor is very much in doubt." His arguments in the official report, filed at the CUP office in Ottawa, later became encapsulated as the exemplar case in defending the underground journalism movement; the Canadian counterpart to a larger debate regarding the treatment of a now-classic civil rights essay, The Student as Nigger, as well as other related forms of "challenging" social commentary.
Burman's first professional role was as an Education Reporter at his father's newspaper, the Montreal Star, in the late 1960s. He then spent several years as a freelancer, including a stint in South America, where he found his first big story: Vilcabamba, often called the valley of longevity and reputed to be one of the sources for modern fountain of youth mythologies.
From 1982 to 1984, Burman contributed a dozen essays on international relations to The Globe and Mail.
CBC
Radio
Burman joined the CBC in 1972. He worked for CBC Radio in Montreal as a contributing producer to As It Happens and, later, as executive producer of Cross Country Checkup.
Television
After working in Montreal as a current affairs story editor with the nightly news program City At Six he moved to Toronto, where he ultimately landed as senior writer on The National under the guidance of Lloyd Robertson (1975–76), Peter Kent (1976–78), and Knowlton Nash (1978–88).
From 1980 to 1982, Burman was executive producer of The National and created the redesign of the newscast when it moved in 1982 to its new prime-time slot at 10 p.m. After this, he spent three years based in London (1982–85) for CBC Television news. In London, he and correspondent Brian Stewart were the first North American journalists on the ground to cover the 1984 - 1985 famine in Ethiopia, where they found Birhan Woldu (the "face of famine" that inspired both Live Aid and Live 8).