Lyse Doucet, a BBC reporter, delivered a lecture on Nov. 8, at the Canadian War Museum to launch the Peter Stursberg Foreign Correspondents lecture series. She also took part in a seminar at Carleton University on Nov. 9, with students from Carleton’s journalism program.
Doucet spoke about topics such as reporting about war, ‘fake news’, and journalism today. She also took part in a live Q&A with CBC’s Paul Kennedy, and took questions from the audience.
Although she currently works in London, Doucet still feels a strong attachment to her Canadian roots.
“I still regard myself as a Canadian journalist,” she said. “So, an opportunity to come and speak to Canadian journalists and be part of a Canadian journalist lecture was personally very important.”
The following day, she met with students for a lunch seminar. While students ate, Doucet discussed her own experiences as a reporter, how to approach delicate topics, and how to prepare for work in different regions of the world.
The lecture series was named after Peter Stursberg, who was a CBC reporter on the ground during the Second World War. His son Richard Stursberg, a former executive vice-president of CBC, spoke at the event on his father’s behalf.
The initiative for this lecture series began with Stursberg’s family after his death in 2014, according to Susan Harada, associate director for Carleton’s School of Journalism and Communication. They wanted to do something to “build on his legacy.”
“They felt very strongly that he contributed a great deal as a war correspondent,” she said. “They wanted to be able to set something up that would provide some context to people who wanted to head out the door and follow in those kinds of footsteps.
Doucet also said she found lots of inspiration in some of Stursberg’s work during the Second World War, and was pleased with the opportunity to pay tribute to him. She said she particularly admired the way he drew listeners into his work, the “honesty” in his reporting style, and the ways he made his listeners feel like they were on the ground with him.
“It was a combination of his skills as a journalist because he wrote very well, his descriptions were very evocative, he had very good use of sound as well as script, but he was also honest with us,” she said. “There was no arrogance in his reporting.”
While Harada isn’t sure who she would like to see as the next speaker, she said she’d like to see someone who can bring an international perspective. She said she also hopes to see more young people in the audience.
“It’s not necessarily just a Canadian lecture series,” she said. “We want it to have more of an international flavour because conflict is international.”
She said she also hopes to see more young people in the audience.
When Doucet was initially contacted by the school to deliver the lecture, she said she felt surprised as she had done a lecture a few years before and thought they could use a new speaker. However, she was “very touched and very honoured” to have been asked.
Doucet also sees great merit to celebrating the history of Canadian foreign correspondence as a means of understanding our own history.
“History has lessons for us,” she said. “It tells us who we are as a nation, it tells us who we are as people.”
