Heather Abbott, Canada, is the Senior Producer, International coverage, for the CBS Evening News.
CBS maintains the largest staff of foreign correspondents of any American network, and the flagship evening broadcast has won every major award since the position was created in 2011. The program has been honored five times, including a Peabody and 2 Emmys, for its in-depth coverage of the war in Syria.
Before coming to New York, Abbott spent six years at the London bureau, where she reported widely from the Middle East, Europe and Africa. She has reported extensively on the war in Iraq, frequently rotating into Baghdad as bureau chief, and supervising stories on oil smuggling, sectarian violence, and government corruption. She produced a groundbreaking series on Iraqi refugees in Syria and the plight of Iraqi women in prison. Abbott has also reported from Iran, first on the nuclear standoff, and later on the disputed elections of June 2009.
Before joining CBS, she ran the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation’s London bureau TV news operations, capping a 15-year career with the CBC, first in its radio division, and then as a documentary television producer. Her stories included a two-part series on a Canadian oil company’s role in Sudan’s civil war; election fraud in Zimbabwe; and a feud among warlords in northern Afghanistan.
In 2002, Abbott won a Gemini award for best news coverage of Iraq, another one for the best interview; and in 2001, she was awarded a Gemini for her documentary profile of a former Afghan General. She was a Knight Fellow at Stanford University in 1997.
