David McGuffin

David McGuffin is a veteran broadcast journalist, podcast host and producer, currently the founding editor of Explore Podcast Productions, based out of Ottawa. He spent over twenty years working overseas as a foreign correspondent and senior producer for some of the world's leading news organizations, including CBC, NPR, BBC, NBC, ABC, PBS, CTV among many others. Prior to his return home to Ottawa in 2018, he was a Supervising Producer with National Public Radio in Washington, DC on its flagship national news and current affairs program, Morning Edition. In 2010 he helped launch Voice of America's South Sudan radio service, as its Managing Editor. From 2004 until 2010, he was the Africa Correspondent for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, reporting for its television, radio and digital news services. From his base in Nairobi, Kenya, he re-asserted CBC's presence on the continent, regularly reporting from conflict zones in Darfur, Congo, Somalia, as well as Afghanistan. He also covered a wide range of social, economic, and cultural issues affecting Africa, travelling from Timbuktu to Mogadishu, Khartoum to Cape Town. In his work, he covered Nelson Mandela's final international tour as South African President, interviewed Nobel Peace Prize Winner Desmond Tutu, as well as rebel leaders, sports stars, Grammy award winning artists and indicted war criminals. The CBC closed the Africa bureau in April 2012 after the federal government chopped $115 million from its Parliamentary grant.[1]

McGuffin previously served as the bureau chief in Moscow for Feature Story News, a British broadcast news agency, during the last tumultuous years of the Yeltsin era. His reports from the former Soviet Union aired on National Public Radio, CBC News, ABC Radio News and PBS. In 2000, he opened FSN's Beijing bureau, before joining CTV News as its Beijing bureau chief and Asia correspondent, reporting from across Asia, including in North Korea. During a two-year stint in Rome, he also reported for ABC News and NBC News, on Vatican and European affairs. His reports aired on NBC Nightly News, MSNBC and ABC Radio. His first job in journalism was for the MacNeil–Lehrer Newshour on PBS. He was part of the team that launched the NewsHour's award-winning digital site and he oversaw the NewsHour's digital foreign coverage. He graduated from Trent University, the journalism program at the University of King's College and Lisgar Collegiate Institute.