Sheila MacVicar Biography
Sheila MacVicar is a Canadian television journalist who most recently works with Al Jazeera America as the host of Compass With Sheila MacVicar and a correspondent for America Tonight.
She is a native of Montreal and has worked as a reporter for CBS News from June 2004 until 2013 as the network’s London correspondent.
She has also worked as a reporter for CBC television (1981-1990). Apart from working with CBC, she also worked for ABC News (1990-2001), as well as CNN (2001-2004).
She worked at CBC affiliate stations in Calgary and Montreal form 1977. She graduated from Carleton University in 1977 with a Bachelor of Journalism.
Sheila MacVicar Age
Sheila’s birth date is unidentified as she maintains a low profile of her private life. Sheila was born in Montreal, Canada. This information will soon be updated.“
Sheila MacVicar Height
The Canadian journalist measures 5 feet 6 inches in height which is equivalent to 1.68 meters tall. she also has a weight of 54 kilograms.
Sheila MacVicar Family
There is no information regarding her family. Additionally, there is no information about her siblings. She belongs to Canadian nationality and English ethnicity.
Sheila MacVicar Husband
Sheila is a married woman though she confessed that she is married, she did not disclose the identity of her husband. The couple have a daughter together and are living a happy life together with no sign of any marrital affairs. This information will soon be updated.
Sheila MacVicar Career
She worked as a correspondent for ABC News starting from 1990. Despite working for ABC, she also worked with CNN after working for ABC for two years.
She joined CNN in 2001. While in CNN, she worked as an International correspondent based in London. She has grown her career and is a wide known television personality and has covered several events around the globe including conflicts in Bosnia, Rwanda, and Iraq.
As a reporter, she has also covered wars and crime stories. In addition, she has also worked and has reported on security and terrorism issues.
Besides that, in her journalism career has traveled the Gulf region to report on tensions with Iraq and the ensuing war. Likewise, she has also been in Kuwait, Iraq, Lebanon, and many other countries to collect several reports.
Besides that, as a reporter for ABC News, she worked in Europe, Africa. In the initial stage of her career in 1981, she also worked for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation.
During 1990, she also worked for CBC National News as a foreign correspondent based in London. Similarly, she has also served CBC-TV.
During 2004, she also joined CBS News in 2004 and worked as a correspondent for about more than six years. In fact, she has also been currently working as the television anchor in Al Jazeera America since 2010.
Sheila MacVicar Salary|Sheila MacVicar Net Worth
Her salary and net worth are disclosed. This information will soon be updated.
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Sheila MacVicar Interview
Meet Compass host Sheila MacVicar
Originally from Montreal, Sheila MacVicar has been a correspondent for more than three decades, first with the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, then ABC News, CNN, and CBS News. For more than 20 years, she covered the world from her base in London, earning many accolades along the way including three Emmy Awards, a Peabody Award, and a DuPont Award.
MacVicar, whose reporting as a senior correspondent with America Tonight has won two National Headliner Awards, is the host of Al Jazeera America’s new foreign policy show Compass, based in Washington, D.C. This is the first time she’s lived in the United States. Here, she speaks about what she learned covering war and the experience of being a woman in the media business.
What was your first journalism job?
At a newspaper in Montreal. I was this kid on a news desk that had some great reporters working there because it was such an extraordinary time. We sat at long worktables, almost like the kind of tables they have in convents, and of course, we’re talking the old typewriters, so we’re like, bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang-bang. And there’s this guy, a classic police reporter. And every once in a while he gets up, and he walks by, and he says, “Kid, there’s a floater in the Lachine Canal. Are you coming?”
Did you go?
Yeah, I went – more than once.
Where have you spent a lot of time reporting?
I spent a lot of time in Baghdad, in most of the Middle East, the Balkans, South East Asia. I spent a lot of time in Africa, in the conflict zones of Sierra Leone and Liberia. I got malaria in Ethiopia.
Was it very serious?
By the time I realized I was sick, it was many months later and I was in Poland. It was the time of the Solidarity Movement, and all kinds of craziness were ensuing, and I collapsed in Warsaw. I was hospitalized and then flew home to Canada. I couldn’t work for months. I remember the restrictions: You can walk half a block, you can walk to the corner store, but you can’t buy anything because you can’t carry it.
Have you ever thought you were going to die?
Where would you like to start? I was in Kuwait within 10 hours of it being liberated, when there were still firefights galore. I spent years in the Balkans, covering all the Balkans wars. I was in Albania when Albania melted down over Ponzi schemes. I did the nasty wars of West Africa. I covered the genocide and the cholera epidemic of Rwanda.
I have PTSD. I’ve had it for a long time. I’m now at more of a distance, which helps. And I’ve had a fair amount of therapy. But sometimes, even now, things take me back to a place in ways that cannot be predicted. It’s something that is still not talked about very much in most newsrooms. That’s something I’d like to change.
I’ve met extraordinary people and seen some truly inspirational things. And I’ve seen some truly horrifying things. And I spent a lot of my career exploring the thinness of the veneer of civilization; what makes evil.
Have you come to any grand conclusions? What makes evil?
One of the things I used to say toward the end of the Balkans because I was so fed up with nationalist excuse-mongering-I wanted one of those metallic signs that I could stick on the side of the frickin’ armored car that said: “I never again want to hear 14th-century justifications for 20th-century atrocities.” I was tired of people who were so into this fundamental historic wrong that was still so raw that they were willing to kill their neighbors. By the end, I just could not deal with that.
What conflict was the most traumatizing to report on?
I think, in the words of some family members, my body count got a little high. After the wars of the ’90s and Rwanda, making the turn to the post-9/11 era, and the carnage of Iraq and now Syria – places where I had too many friends and colleagues die, where I saw too many people die – that was not something I was trained to deal with; something else I’d like to change.
What was it like being a female foreign correspondent?
I never thought of war reportage as a macho business. I was terrified the entire time I was in Sarajevo, even though I spent weeks at a time there, over and over again. There were very few moments when I was in or around combat when I was not very scared. And in a way, because I could admit I was scared, people around me could also admit that they were scared. And that made it easier in a way.
What was a time you were really scared?
Face down in an open field on the border between Rwanda and then-Zaire, caught in the middle of a firefight, as terrified of snakes as bullets.
Do you think to be a woman impacted your reporting?
To this day, I’m not really good at identifying what kind of plane that is or what kind of gun that is. And I’m not particularly interested. I’ve mostly been on the pointy end of what comes out. What I am more interested in, and this is where I think women do make a difference as editors and correspondents and producers, is that I‘m interested in what is happening to the people living there. I’m interested in what is happening in their lives.
How will your new foreign affairs show Compass captivate American audiences?
I think people everywhere engage with great stories and human stories. That’s what we are about. The themes may be large and “important,” but we tell them on a human scale. And I think that Americans, like most people, engage when they understand how something affects them, their future or their children’s’ future. We’re not going to be wonky.
How do you see Compass being different, or filling a hole?
You know, in my career, I’ve seen huge news organizations whittle down their overseas operations to bare bones. Sure some of that made cost-saving sense. But it also cost capacity, experience, and understanding. We’re going to take one subject an episode and dive in deep. And we are so lucky to have the time to tell more nuanced and complex stories in a thoughtful, provocative and engaging way.
What advice would you give to someone starting out in the industry?
You know, I started out by saying “don’t.” But I have a daughter graduating this spring from journalism school, and so clearly she is not taking my advice. The business has changed. The work and the way we work has changed. But there are still amazing stories to be told. And if you are drawn to telling stories, to telling the stories of peoples’ lives, then this is the business. And I still want to tell stories.
Source: america.aljazeera.com