The Current - Brian Stewart on covering the world

Episode Date: September 17, 2025

For decades, CBC’s foreign correspondent Brian Stewart covered events that changed the world, from the famine in Ethiopia to brutal regimes in Latin America, to the fall of the Berlin Wall. But it was his reports from Ethiopia that galvanized Canadians to send humanitarian aid to the region, and led to Live Aid, one of the biggest charity concerts in history. Brian Stewart reflects on his remarkable career on the front lines of history.

From best-selling author and journalist Scott Anderson, King of Kings tells the story of the Iranian Revolution, an event as world-shattering as the French and Russian revolutions. Based on extensive research and interviews, this spellbinding story is one of a dictator oblivious to the disdain of his subjects and a superpower blundering into disaster. Available now in hardcover and audiobook. This is a CBC podcast.

Hello, I'm Matt Galloway, and this is the, current podcast. Amid escalation, the desire of the Europeans to get out of Lebanon before things get worse is almost palpable. Brian Stewart, CBC News, Beirut. I'm Brian Stewart in South Africa, where we are witnessing an event quite unthinkable just a few years ago. This country's first free and non-racial election.

Usually the innocents suffer most, and Knight still brings a special terror in this battered and frightened nation. Brian Stewart, CBC News, El Salvador. Scenes which will demand repeated emergency action, but action which will arrive so often, too late. This is Brian Stewart for the journal in Ethiopia. A trusted sign-off for longtime CBC viewers. For decades, Brian Stewart was on the front lines of history,

and his reporting took Canadians to the front lines of conflicts, catastrophes, and events that changed this way. world. All across northern Ethiopia, famine is along each road and at the gates of every town. By the hundreds of thousands, peasants are fleeing the worst drought in memory. Unknown thousands are dying along the way. It's feared close to a million could die within months unless the world responds with a massive relief effort. In November of 1984, Brian Stewart was on the ground in Ethiopia. His stories about starving people and dying children sent shockwaves around the world. They galvanized the Canadian government to take the lead and send humanitarian aid

to the region. And in the summer of 1985, the British musician Bob Geldof assembled a star-studded lineup of artists to perform in two epic concerts for Ethiopia called Live Aid. Unless we forget what we're here, I'd like to introduce a video made by CBC television. The subject speaks for itself. Thank you. Good night. Please send your money in. It's David Bowie at Live Aid. He cuts his set short so that he could show that video captured by Brian and his team. That's the moment that Bob Geloff says the phone lines around the world melted down. The CBC's footage

helped Live Aid raise more than $140 million. Brian Stewart has written a memoir. It's titled On the Ground. My Life has a Foreign Correspondent and he's with me in our Toronto studio. Brian Stewart, good morning. Good morning. What a pleasure to have you here. Oh, it's lovely to be here. What does it like to listen back to some of that, including, I mean, we'll talk about Ethiopia, but that's a swath of you out on the road there.

Yeah, I notice my palms get sweaty right away. I'm just cast back into some of that area. In the book, you say you're often asked whether you miss it, and you don't. I don't miss it at all. I don't miss certainly being out there right now, where I think the professional foreign correspondent is incomparably more dangerous, more demanding, the 24-7 news cycle. give so little time.

There's this vortex swirl of events, the like of which the world probably has never seen so many crises at once developing. And I don't think reporters out there now get as much time to reflect as we did back in that earlier time. So I don't envy them their work out there. I admire them enormously because the responsibility on them to try and clarify what is going on out there is one of the highest responsibilities of journalism. And unfortunately, journalism is getting weaker out there all the time as networks cut back on the number of foreign correspondents have.

So it's a dwindly number of correspondence doing a harder job all the time and a more dangerous job. It's not good. You start this book with the Ethiopia story, which, as you said, I mean, it changed lives, changed your life. When you went into it, you were told you will see things that will change your life forever. and you were asked whether you were ready to go to Ethiopia? I thought I was. You know, I'd seen civil war in El Salvador.

I'd grown up a kid in the aftermath of World War II. I knew a lot about war and suffering. I thought, and I prepared myself for a great challenge, like getting fit to go in. And I thought I read everything I possibly could about Ethiopia. When I hit the ground, I saw things that nothing had ever prepared me for. It was like seeing the world. world after a nuclear holocaust.

What do you think changed you forever because of what you saw there? I think the main thing was, life got more serious after that. I was a much more serious young man, not all that young then. And it struck me that I knew I was going to suffer what I used to call psychic scar tissue from seeing too much. Foreign correspondents almost certainly suffer a lot of that. I had no idea how long term the damage that can be done. when you're witnessing these horrors over and over and over again.

And you're seeing literally children die in front of you and mothers holding up a child who's about to die or a dead child even thinking it might still be brought back to life. And you see this for weeks on end. Today reporters might go in for two or three days. We went in for weeks upon weeks and then a second trip. And we even followed up the Ethiopian famine by going next door to Sudan to cover the Sudan famine.

So I got a lot more serious, a lot older, and I never left me the unfairness of life. What did it do to tell the story? I mean, you told a number of different stories, but in many ways this story was told to the world through the eyes of one young girl. Yes, very early on in our first trip there, we went to a feeding station where there was all sorts of families with children who were very sick. Some were dying, obviously, someone died. And out of the corner of my eye, when I was going down the line,

interviewing some of them. I saw a young girl fall over and slap against the concrete. I called a nurse. The nurse runs forward, picks her up, runs into a little medical center. They have a one-room center. And the nurse, an Irish nun, is telling me, this girl is going to die, unfortunately. She'll die within 15 minutes, unfortunately. We've got an image of her face in the last breathing. We were treated from that room because we wanted to give her the dignity of death. And we knew that she was going to be buried. later that afternoon. That's what they were doing in a famine with these numbers. We went to film some other areas, came back that afternoon. All of us shaken to the core having

witnessed this. There was something about that face that struck me as symbolic of Ethiopia itself, appealing to the world, the eyes staring into the future, looking for help. And we get a small group of people in a circle of smiling. And people didn't smile in Ethiopia in those days for sure and there was the girl alive being held in the arm of the same none and she had been saved by a last minute needle and i did a story that went to many networks about her survival perhaps showing that Ethiopia itself would survive years later and began to pray on my memory more and more that she contributed so much her own self her own suffering that it was just wrong for leave her there in that field and leave her back

in a country that was still in the throes of real suffering and the rest of it. So I convinced the journal to send us back. Me and my producer, Tony Berman, me back to find her. I didn't think we could. I thought it would be most unlikely we could still find her. And miraculously,

we found her within four days. And there she was. And it was amazing. I did a documentary Life After Death. If she can do it, Ethiopia's going to be able to do it. And I just started to stay in touch with the family, and we have ever since. You know a smile as you talk about it. Her name is Birhan Waldo.

Birhan Waldo, yeah. She was at three and a half at the time. She's now, she's at two college degrees. She's been on live aid number two with dancing with Madonna on stage. We were on Oprah Winfrey together. What she really wanted to do was go back and work with her people. She is now back in the same area. I first saw her helping disabled children of famine and hunger. reason that people know her story was because you were there, you told the story, but also it's incredible. You mentioned Tony Berman. Tony Berman had to sneak this video cassette of these interviews of the footage out of Ethiopia. Ethiopia did not want this story told in some ways around the world. Correct. It was a Marxist regime and it didn't want any crews to get up north

to see the famine. CBC managed to be one of the first up with the BBC. There were only two cruise. We, when we did our first compilation of the scenes and to get out for November 1st, we feared it would be stopped at the airport and would take the tape would be taken away and basically that's the last we'd see of it. So Tony Berman straps it to his back and risking a quick jail term if he'd been caught and flies out to Nairobi, the feed point where we fed it to Canada and that night it was on there.

And they ran it top of the, top of the broadcast, four and a half minutes long. went right across the country, families all across the country were in tears. The Prime Minister was in tears. Talk about that. Talk about the reaction of the government of the time and how people responded and what it said about who we were as a nation in that moment. You know, it's a story not told enough about Canada. It was one of its finest periods. There was a time then when Canada was often called the Samaritan Nation because it always raced in the help.

Mulroney had just become prime minister. He's at home in 24 Sussex with his family. They see this item, and tears are just flowing across the way. He had just chosen a new ambassador to the UN, Stephen Lewis, from the NDP of all things. He calls Lewis the next morning and says, Stephen, did you happen to watch the CBC National last night? Stephen Lewis says, yes, Prime Minister, I did, and I am hoping you are going to ask me what I think you're going to ask me. And Maruni said, yes, get down to the United Nations and raise hell. I want Canada to bring this before the world, and we are going to look.

lead the charge to address the famine crisis, and Canada did. It was unlike other countries, you know, when the British had their musicians and the rest of it, the Canadian government said, we're going to lead, but we want the Canadian public to be our partners. And the public and the government worked in this extraordinary union raising money right across the country, coast to coast. Everybody was sort of involved. The government led at the United Nations.

It led to a certain extent Al-Natas Ababa among the foreign aid agencies and it dominated Canadian thinking for at least almost two years the struggle to end this kind of famine in Africa forever. This is because of your work. Joe Clark was asked why governments had sprung into action after doing nothing for so long

and his answer was television. And there's no denying it because Prince stories would have come out, did come out at times and people just, it doesn't carry that. punch in the gut the television carries. And tape had that immediacy that film didn't have. So people were watching it on their television set, seen it with immediacy.

And Clark himself flew into Addis Ababa, the first foreign minister to visit the crisis spot because it was a Marxist regime. He comes in. And it was like a bolt of energy and excitement for all the aid agencies there. My God, an outside country is really coming to stir things up. And Clark did. From best-selling author and journalist Scott Anderson, King of Kings tells the story of the Iranian Revolution, an event as world-shattering as the French and Russian revolutions. Based on extensive research and interviews, this spellbinding story is one of a dictator oblivious to the disdain of his subjects and a superpower blundering into disaster.

Available now in hardcover and audiobook. Hey, have you heard about Viagra ODF? The most recent addition to the Viagra brand comes in the form of an orally dissolving film strip. In fact, ODF stands for orally dissolving film. You'll be glad to know that Viagra ODF is the same price as the Viagra tablets, leaving the choice up to you and your physician. If you've been prescribed Viagra or have been thinking about it, talk to your doctor and ask about Viagra ODF strips.

Just the last point on this before we, we move on. What is it like for you to watch hunger now around the world? We're seeing this in Gaza. We're seeing it in Sudan. Given what you saw, not through a television screen like many of us did, but they're in person. What is it like for you to see what's happening now? It's awful because the whole feeling comes back of just how grossly unfair it is. Famine in particular is unlike any other catastrophe, I think. In many ways, it's usually part of a war, but it's worse than more. because famine is the disease is the situation, the crisis that kills families off in front of each other. Everybody is suffering this horrible, ghastly, slow motion torture to death.

And they're the most innocent people on earth all the time. That if you have to witness these things, you're seeing all day long hundreds of people that you want to reach into your pocket and pull out something and give them a little bit of food. You can't. and your own guilt feeling is running really, really strong. I don't see how the world can watch a famine and not feel the kind of instinctive guilt that we can't let this happen to mothers and children like this.

These are stories that you wanted to tell. When you were in school, you had an essay on future goals and you said you wanted to be a foreign correspondent. That's right. That's right. Why? Well, you know, I had been born in the middle of the Second World War. I grew up in the aftermath of war.

War comics, where our stuff, us kids, along the hockey cards, war games we played. But I also grew up at a time when we listened to news. We talked to, you know, about World News, the Cold War, the rest of it. And I'm at home watching on television, these odd people that would run around with notebooks and pens and maybe a microphone. And I'm thinking, these people get sent in there for free. They get to send in and see history in the making. I went in and started telling all my teachers and fellow students that they thought it was crazy. The book has incredible stories, and we get to television, but you were writing in Montreal for the Montreal Gazette at a time of great crisis in this country during the October crisis.

What do you remember just about the mood in the country at that time? Well, the mood was the greatest mix of things imaginable. I came back from working in London suburb paper in 1967. Expo was on. I wanted to be back and see Expo. It was a centennial year. Canada was bragging to the world. We're here.

We're on stage. We're a world event. And Montreal was the greatest city, I think, of the world at that time. It was just a hive of inspiration and emotions. And great stories and characters. Great stories and characters. And by the greatest luck of my career, probably, I got a job of the Montreal gets at. It was a ground zero.

The FLQ bombing campaign begins. Then the War Measures Act. And you're living in this time of one, I don't say wonderful crisis, but news crises that were just a very major thing's been covered around the world. But you're in a city that's also so enjoyable to live in. You slipped past the Trudeau piece. I mean, we are to credit you with the phrase Trudeau mania. Others have over the years, but unfortunately it is actually me.

I think I can give you the date almost. You say, unfortunately. Well, you know, I had come back from London, so I did not all the Beatlemania stuff. And I come back and I get a job here, and I put on the campaign trail. And, you know, we're following me through, and the crowds are gathering, they're shouting, and they're screaming. They're a little like the rock scene. And there was a giant rally in Toronto when I cover it.

And I said, you know, there wasn't a full old break of Trudeau mania in this. And that was the first time it was used, and I didn't think much of it. But when I got back to the Gazette, kind of a grumpy old editor met me at the door and said, why did you have to use that damn word? Now everybody's starting to use it And it's only going to make this guy even more popular than he ever was It was a disgraceful thing to put in a copy like that So in a way I'm kind of

Get amusement having been the first to use it But at the second time I'm not very proud of having done stuff TV came knocking and you were reluctant to leave print for television Yeah, I never even thought of it I love the world of print and everything about it And I love the Gazette with an absolute passion Still do from afar And they suddenly they came to me

asked me once if I'd fill in on the local current affairs show at night. And I thought, oh, when I went through Ryerson, I took a TV course and I, it was cameras with black eyes staring at me. Oh, I don't think I'd want that. But then I thought, a little bit of celebrity maybe, you know, I could maybe do that. I mean, celebrity in this town might be, get me a date, at least. All those kind of ignoble thoughts go through your mind. So I said yes to it. I went into television, utterly unprepared, horrible at first, nervous wreck, absolute nervous wreck in studio, which Valium and Vodka sort of helped me through the first month at least to face it. And there I was in TV, but I decided, even though TV was making me a bit of a nervous wreck,

it was the best way I could probably think of to become a foreign correspondent because the newspapers had fewer and fewer bureaus, but CBC was out there in the world. The way that you described the CBC at that time, you talk about it kind of as a gold era. There was a swagger to the public broadcaster at that time and an intent to put that swagger on display. Absolutely so. We began to invest more in bureaus, foreign correspondents, and the rest of it. And we found when we got out there, we had a good generation of reporters. We were very much sought after by the Americans because they liked their work. So they kept hiring away our reporters. You too.

Yeah, me too. Shame. Shame. But eventually, I was so proud of the years I had with CBC, seeing us grow year by year by year. Networks were all taking interest in us. They wanted to run our items. They wanted to be in partnership with CBC. And Canada was getting a really good inflow of foreign news in that day, a very complex stories, Cold War going on in the Middle East, Africa, you name it. And the journal brought the documentary.

And it brought money and it brought a number of crews, brilliant crews with cameramen. And at one stage, I think they had 14 crews out around the world at once. Unimaginable. Unimaginable in this day and age. We've sunken back. We still have wonderful people. But the resources now for that kind of coverage of faded very, very badly. Do you worry about that, about not just about the CBC, but how we think about news now?

I mean, in the book you talk as well just about the dispute over truth and how we're seeing people argue over facts and dismiss facts and create their own facts. What worries you the most about what we as viewers and listeners and citizens aren't learning from the world? Two things in the main. First of all, there is the problem of social media and the willingness of more and more people go into silos where the only news they're interested in is the news that fits their what they want to hear. So the news that's now in play has a huge responsibility to stand at Horatio at the bridge you know, keeping good journalism going. But internationally, I have a separate fear,

and that is that this nation is in danger going my OPEC. This nation? Canada. Canada is in danger. I mean, listen, we are a country that doesn't even have a dedicated foreign intelligence service. We have a cabinet that often looks out to lunch when it comes to trade deals and news crises breaking the iron in the world because our diplomatic corps, and its reporting system has waned badly over the United States.

years. And now on top of that, we have a new service where this may shock some Canadians, but here's a reality check. If you think of a minivan, a not very big viny van, a small minivan, you could fit every Canadian broadcast journalist into one minivan. And you would find there's probably not one in the southern hemisphere. That our foreign correspondents could fit into the one minivan, all of the private networks and CBC. This is a real danger to Canada. Can it be turned around?

Do you think those assignments cost money? They cost a lot of money. Yeah. The biggest challenge right now is to get more of our people out there for longer periods in bureaus that are, you know, these temporary bureaus even. They don't have to be full-time, but temporary bureaus for a month or two months. You have seen a lot in your time out in the world. And you write in the book about, I mean, we talk about PTSD.

But you also talk about how maybe what you have seen isn't purely leading to PTSD, but something else. Yeah, it's an interesting. Like moral injury and more. There's a remarkable psychiatrist in Toronto, Anthony Feinstein. I had a mental breakdown, a nervous breakdown back in the 90s. Feinstein and others has labeled it as moral injury, which is not a mental illness. It's a wound to the soul. It's seen the kind of things that human beings shouldn't have to see.

And realizing when you see that, you haven't lived up to your highest image of what you could do or should do. You feel that, yes, you helped many people, but you didn't help that family with two kids beside the road. Maybe you could have got a space in a van for them. In these kind of situations or in war, could I have stopped that massacre by running in front of the troops and say, don't do this, you're on camera? Those kind of things that happen leave a kind of doubt in yourself, doubt of. of your own value as a person. How do you address that? I mean, the book is filled with remarkable stories

about change that you have made. Things that you have seen where, again, if we go back to Ethiopia, people watched the footage and materially things changed. They did. And, you know, I always had before me that, look, you are doing good.

I knew I was doing good. And I knew journalism was a place. And the only place, I could be qualified to do good. I couldn't be a doctor. I'd be hopeless. at those other professions. But I could do to good journalism, and that was some real crutch

and a belief in myself. But at the same time, you say, I could have done good journalism and also help more people. That requires therapy, basically. You have to sit down and think, is that realistic? Could you really have done that?

And even if you have one, then you'd have the same feelings about the other one and the other one and the other one. So you basically come to terms with yourself that if you go into these situations, you're going to leave feeling unclean and in many ways you almost deserve to feel unclean

because you're there for the world and the world should feel unclean. And maybe if you're feeling unclean, the world will get the message that we shouldn't let these things happen. We can't let these happen. Things happen. So I've had therapy and I recovered well from it

and I think I gained in many ways from having gone through that experience because it gave me a greater depth of feeling and of the psychological and emotional dramas that play out in this profession and in this world. And there's not a bone in you that misses it? There is some. There is some.

Sometimes I'll get a little bit of a twitch when I see somebody. But no, realistically, I was working at a different time. I don't envy the ones out there now. The dangers, the hassles, and the rest of it. And I also think it's harder to make sense of the world today than it was back then. But yes, you know, I miss. the camaraderie. I miss the good times. I mustn't let people think it was all dreary drudgery. I saw the Berlin Wall come down, communism fall, apartheid fall. I mean, how much more can you

ask for? I saw magnificent, wonderful people that are just in awe. It was a great privilege to meet them, the mandalas of the world and the aid workers and the radicals who survive years of being in prison and torture the rest of it. So I saw saints. I saw awful evil people, but I also saw scenes. Thanks for everything you've done. You've had an extraordinary impact, but an incredible life as well. We've barely, barely scratched at it. I hope people read the book to learn more about it.

Thank you. Thanks very much, Matt. The legendary Brian Stewart, scholar, recipient of the Order of Canada, long-time CBC journalist and author of a new memoir. It's called On the Ground, My Life as a Foreign Correspondent. You've been listening to the current podcast. My name is Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening. I'll talk to you soon.

For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca.ca slash podcasts.