CBC senior European correspondent Don Murray

CBC Moderator: Hello and welcome to our live chat with Don Murray, CBC Television's senior European correspondent, based in London. Don is one of CBC's most experienced and prolific foreign correspondents. He has filed hundreds of reports — in French and English — from China, Europe, the Middle East and the Soviet Union. His recent coverage has included the wars in Iraq, Afghanistan and Kosovo, as well as other news stories in the Middle East and Africa.

Don began his career as a reporter for the Montreal Gazette, before joining CBC in 1974 as a reporter for CBLT-TV in Toronto. He became a foreign correspondent for CBC in 1980, when he was assigned to Beijing, where he filed reports for both radio and television, followed by postings to Paris, Jerusalem, Moscow and Berlin. He has been London-based since 1995.

We have solicited questions from viewers and staff which our moderator will post if there are no questions from the audience. Let's begin with this one, Don: Which stories that you covered recently were the most moving or compelling and why?

Don Murray: Well, in the last year in London, the most compelling were the series of suicide bombs in London's transport system. It obviously caught everybody off guard because the government, Prime Minister Blair and the senior ministers, and a huge chunk of the media, including ourselves, were near Edinburgh at the G8 summit.

The city itself, when we got there, it was quite eerie, because tens of thousands of people were walking because the entire transport network had been shut down. There were, as we prepared the stories, there were extraordinary stories of heroism and of carnage, I have to say.

Events like that create their own dramatic arc, actually, and so in the following days survivors came forward to talk, people came forward to lay wreaths and flowers. There was an organized memorial at some point in Trafalgar Square. The world tends to react to such events by giving them a dramatic unity, an emotional unity. From horror to courage to grief, and to remembrance and to hope.

The aftermath was very sobering. A British House of Commons committee on intelligence and security recently reported that the British intelligence services completely missed the main facets of this attack. They had simply not believed there would be homegrown terrorism, that they would choose suicide bombing as a method, and that they would attack buses and the subway, what is known as "the tube" in London.

CBC Moderator: You've reported on a world that has gone from Cold War, during your Moscow days, to a world dominated by one superpower. What was your physically toughest shoot?

Don Murray: A lot of the shoots I did in the ex-Soviet Union were physically tough. For a country that was a superpower, its economic conditions were absolutely miserable in the provincial areas. And during an earthquake in Armenia, I found myself camping for days, literally, trying to cover the story.

But by far the most physically demanding shoot was Afghanistan, after Sept. 11. We found ourselves in a country that was a dustball in the north with no roads. We literally had to travel by horseback to get to the front line in one area. Everybody fell ill, and at least two colleagues from other news organizations were helicoptered out, and I believe two or three actually contracted malaria there. I was happy to leave when we finally got to Kabul.

CBC Moderator: Why did you become a journalist?

Don Murray: I became a journalist so long ago that at the time, it was considered a form of madness to want to do it. Reporters in newspapers were hacks and drunks, at least in the eyes of the public. We were certainly underpaid. But I was in university and didn't have any idea what to do, and a fellow who ran the sports section for the campus newspaper got me to write about a soccer game.

I took my copy down to the newsroom on Monday night and stayed till dawn because they were putting the paper together. And clearly it was much more fun than work. And I was hooked.

Getting into television was even easier. They were giving out jobs like candy when I started. It was a lower form of life when I started. I gather things have changed.

CBC Moderator: Meghan asks: Do you have a favorite memory as a correspondent so far?

Don Murray: As a journalist, my favourite memory has to be Aug. 21, 1991. This was the night the coup against Gorbachev to restore a hardline Communist regime collapsed, and I waited all night with thousands of Russians in Moscow. All of them expected to be attacked by tanks and soldiers. Instead the soldiers joined the crowds, and relief gave way to jubilation. And the coup leaders cut and ran.

The coup and its failure brought the Soviet Union to an end less than six months later. And I don't think I'll see another empire collapse in front of me in my lifetime.

CBC Moderator: Ben E. asks: Do prisoners taken in Afghanistan by Canadian soldiers have protections against torture?

Don Murray: I think the answer is, officially, yes. The problem that many other countries have discovered with renditions [the transfer of prisoners between countries for interrogation or prosecution] is that there is an underground prisoner economy. And it's not clear if these prisoners remain in the hands of Canadians, and what happens to them and how they're treated.

CBC Moderator: Kevin asks: Where would you like to be posted next?

Don Murray: I've had six bureaus and I think if I was posted again there would be a revolt, somewhere in the newsroom. What will happen soon is, without moving, I'll be doing longer pieces, less driven by the daily news.

CBC Moderator: What kind of groundwork does it take to "hit the ground running" on a major breaking news story in a country you haven't covered before? (Does one exist?)

Don Murray: This is a case where a very experienced bureau is absolutely crucial. While we're literally packing, one or both or three of us are trying to phone to find people on the ground to work with us and tell us what's going on.

While we're in the air, our satellite producer, Valma Glenn, is arranging, trying to find out how to feed material out, where we can stay, where we can get transportation.

When you get there it's just instinct and experience. And, it has to be said, following the herd.

CBC Moderator: Jayne asks: I'm curious to know the perception that citizens of the countries you have covered have of Canadians, and how you feel that is the same or different from what you see Canadians as.

Don Murray: There have been some countries that I've worked in where the perception of Canadians is extremely favourable. And extremely powerful. I think in particular of Ukraine, when it was part of the Soviet Union. But literally dozens of people would come up to us and say they listen to Radio-Canada International's Ukrainian service.

In other parts of the world, the perception of Canada is often that of Canadians on the ground, the NGOs, and more laterally, soldiers. That conceivably will cut both ways in Afghanistan. It was interesting in Iraq how small the world seemed. Every Iraqi we met seemed to know that Canada refused to join the coalition.

CBC Moderator: Most of the reporters kidnapped in Iraq seem to have been stringers or freelancers. Are they taking calculated risks that other journalists on the ground respect, or are they blundering naively into situations that more seasoned journalists would avoid?

Don Murray: I think it is true that a larger proportion of freelancers have been involved in kidnappings than staff journalists. The blunt fact is that they have much less protection. They work on their own, without security guards, which most news organizations, including the CBC, use in Iraq.

But you will notice that there have been fewer kidnapping recently. All journalists, including freelancers, are being much more careful and much more discreet.

CBC Moderator: Do you have any tips for young journalists?

Don Murray: If you want to work overseas, my suggestion would be to pick the most dreadful area you can think of, learn the language if you need to, go there and say you're available. Bad news creates good news for young journalists. I have seen young journalists get lots and lots of work, and move forward rapidly in their careers.

Speaking personally, I owe my career as a foreign correspondent to speaking French. I was sent overseas to work in English and in French in China, because it was cheaper for the network. And since then I've been able to learn Russian. I used to speak fairly competent street Chinese, but have forgotten most of it. And German and Czech for work and family reasons. If I were young now, I would start by learning Arabic, I think.

CBC Moderator: That's all the time we have folks. Thanks for joining us Don, and thanks to our questioners and observers. We hope you enjoyed it. We'll post a transcript of this later this week. Goodbye!