Tony Burman / @TonyBurman

Tony Burman is former head of CBC News in Canada and Al Jazeera English in Qatar and was a distinguished visiting professor at Ryerson University’s School of Journalism between 2011 and 2016. Since 2011, he has been a contributing world affairs columnist with the Toronto Star. While managing director of Al Jazeera’s English news channel in Qatar from 2008-2010, its worldwide reach more than doubled to 220 million households, and he led the campaign that brought Al Jazeera to Canada in 2009 and expanded it throughout the United States. In October 2009, Arabian Business Magazine named him the second most influential non-Arab in the Arab world. While at the CBC, he spent more than three decades as an award-winning news and documentary producer, working in 30 countries, including seven years as CBC’s editor-in-chief. He began his journalistic career as a reporter with the Montreal Star.