Saša Petricic ( ) is a Canadian

journalist A journalist is a person who gathers information in the form of text, audio or pictures, processes it into a newsworthy form and disseminates it to the public. This is called journalism. Roles Journalists can work in broadcast, print, advertis ...

and photographer. He is currently a senior correspondent and videojournalist for

CBC Television CBC Television (also known as CBC TV, or simply CBC) is a Television in Canada, Canadian English-language terrestrial television, broadcast television network owned by the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, the national public broadcasting, p ...

's '' The National'' and other

CBC News CBC News is the division of the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation responsible for the news gathering and production of news programs on the corporation's English-language operations, namely CBC Television, CBC Radio, CBC News Network, and CBC ...

programs, based in

Toronto Toronto ( , locally pronounced or ) is the List of the largest municipalities in Canada by population, most populous city in Canada. It is the capital city of the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of Ontario. With a p ...

and specializing in world news. He previously spent five years as the CBC's Asia Correspondent, based in

Beijing Beijing, Chinese postal romanization, previously romanized as Peking, is the capital city of China. With more than 22 million residents, it is the world's List of national capitals by population, most populous national capital city as well as ...

and four years covering the Middle East from

Jerusalem Jerusalem is a city in the Southern Levant, on a plateau in the Judaean Mountains between the Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean and the Dead Sea. It is one of the List of oldest continuously inhabited cities, oldest cities in the world, and ...

Education

Petricic attended high school in

, at the

North Toronto Collegiate Institute North Toronto Collegiate Institute is a semestered, public high school institution with over 1,200 students located in North Toronto area of Toronto, Ontario, Canada. The school is operated and governed by the Toronto District School Board. Fro ...

. He went on to earn a journalism degree with combined honours in

Soviet The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

and

East European Eastern Europe is a subregion of the European continent. As a largely ambiguous term, it has a wide range of geopolitical, geographical, ethnic, cultural and socio-economic connotations. Its eastern boundary is marked by the Ural Mountains, and i ...

Studies from

Carleton University Carleton University is an English-language public university, public research university in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. Founded in 1942 as Carleton College, the institution originally operated as a private, non-denominational evening college to se ...

. He also studied at

Hope College Hope College is a private Christian liberal arts college in Holland, Michigan, United States. It was originally opened in 1851 as the Pioneer School by Dutch immigrants four years after the community was first settled. The first freshman coll ...

Michigan Michigan ( ) is a peninsular U.S. state, state in the Great Lakes region, Great Lakes region of the Upper Midwest, Upper Midwestern United States. It shares water and land boundaries with Minnesota to the northwest, Wisconsin to the west, ...

and at the

University of Quebec A university () is an institution of tertiary education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. ''University'' is derived from the Latin phrase , which roughly means "community of teachers and scholars". U ...

Career

From 1993 to 2001, Petricic covered federal politics, elections and political issues from the Canadian Parliament in

Ottawa Ottawa is the capital city of Canada. It is located in the southern Ontario, southern portion of the province of Ontario, at the confluence of the Ottawa River and the Rideau River. Ottawa borders Gatineau, Gatineau, Quebec, and forms the cor ...

. During that time, he contributed various stories and features to

BBC News BBC News is an operational business division of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) responsible for the gathering and broadcasting of news and current affairs in the UK and around the world. The department is the world's largest broad ...

and

CNN Cable News Network (CNN) is a multinational news organization operating, most notably, a website and a TV channel headquartered in Atlanta. Founded in 1980 by American media proprietor Ted Turner and Reese Schonfeld as a 24-hour cable ne ...

. He subsequently covered major events and issues from every continent as a CBC correspondent and videojournalist. In 2006, Petricic was the first CBC reporter to file stories from

Antarctica Antarctica () is Earth's southernmost and least-populated continent. Situated almost entirely south of the Antarctic Circle and surrounded by the Southern Ocean (also known as the Antarctic Ocean), it contains the geographic South Pole. ...

. He covered the

2004 Indian Ocean earthquake and tsunami On 26 December 2004, at 07:58:53 local time ( UTC+7), a major earthquake with a magnitude of 9.2–9.3 struck with an epicentre off the west coast of Aceh in northern Sumatra, Indonesia. The undersea megathrust earthquake, known in the sci ...

and genocide in Rwanda, the

September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks, also known as 9/11, were four coordinated Islamist terrorist suicide attacks by al-Qaeda against the United States in 2001. Nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercial airliners, crashing the first two into ...

on the U.S. and Canada's mission in Afghanistan for CBC News. From 2011 to 2015, Petricic was Middle East Correspondent for ''The National'', based in

. He covered the region's Arab Spring uprisings from Egypt, Libya, Syria and Tunisia. Petricic also covered conflicts between Israel and Hamas in Gaza in 2012 and 2014. In 2015, Petricic was appointed China Bureau Chief for CBC in Beijing. He followed the rise in power of the

Chinese Communist Party The Communist Party of China (CPC), also translated into English as Chinese Communist Party (CCP), is the founding and One-party state, sole ruling party of the People's Republic of China (PRC). Founded in 1921, the CCP emerged victorious in the ...

leader

Xi Jinping Xi Jinping, pronounced (born 15 June 1953) is a Chinese politician who has been the general secretary of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and Chairman of the Central Military Commission (China), chairman of the Central Military Commission ...

and a new, more assertive China. In the region, he covered standoffs between South Korea and North Korea from both countries, pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong, earthquakes in Nepal and typhoons in the Philippines. Petricic chronicled the arrest of Canadians Michael Kovrig, an ex-diplomat, and Michael Spavor, a businessman, by China on espionage charges. He also watched the

COVID-19 pandemic The COVID-19 pandemic (also known as the coronavirus pandemic and COVID pandemic), caused by severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2), began with an disease outbreak, outbreak of COVID-19 in Wuhan, China, in December ...

spread from

Wuhan Wuhan; is the capital of Hubei, China. With a population of over eleven million, it is the most populous city in Hubei and the List of cities in China by population, eighth-most-populous city in China. It is also one of the nine National cent ...

Hubei Hubei is a province of China, province in Central China. It has the List of Chinese provincial-level divisions by GDP, seventh-largest economy among Chinese provinces, the second-largest within Central China, and the third-largest among inland ...

, China from its first days. Petricic has also taught television journalism at the

National University of Rwanda The National University of Rwanda (NUR; , , UNR) was the largest university in Rwanda. It was located at in the city of Butare and was established in 1963 by the government in cooperation with the Congregation of the Dominicans from the Provin ...

, through the non-profit Rwanda Initiative, and conducted courses in documentary-making at the Canadian Screen Training Centre and through the London-based organization Raindance. On June 12, 2013, Petricic was arrested by Turkish forces during the

2013 Gezi Park protests in Turkey A wave of demonstrations and civil unrest in Turkey began on 28 May 2013, initially to contest the urban development plan for Istanbul's Gezi Park. The protests were sparked by outrage at the violent eviction of a sit-in at the park protesting ...

while photographing a municipal cleanup crew clearing barricades near

Taksim Square Taksim Square (, ), situated in Beyoğlu in the European part of Istanbul, Turkey, is a major tourist and leisure district famed for its restaurants, shops, and hotels. It is considered the heart of modern Istanbul, with the central station of th ...

Istanbul Istanbul is the List of largest cities and towns in Turkey, largest city in Turkey, constituting the country's economic, cultural, and historical heart. With Demographics of Istanbul, a population over , it is home to 18% of the Demographics ...

. He was released one day later.

Awards

Petricic has won numerous awards for his work. In 2014, his war coverage of the Syrian conflict from Aleppo and around Syria won Canada's top TV journalism award, the Canadian Screen Award for Best Reportage. Petricic also won the 1999

Canadian Association of Journalists The Canadian Association of Journalists (CAJ; ''in French: Association Canadienne des Journalistes'') is an independent, not-for-profit organization dedicated to advocacy and professional development for journalists across Canada. Founded in 1978 ...

Award for Investigative Journalism and the 2005 Canadian Radio and Television News Directors' Association Award for his work in Rwanda, for a story profiling Canadian Doctor James Orbinski. In August 2008, Petricic received a Gemini Nomination for Best News Feature for his documentary on activities by Christian missionaries in Thailand after the

Photography

For most of his journalistic career, Petricic has also been a photojournalist and art photographer. His first solo exhibition "Innocent Bystanders" was at Heliographics Gallery in Toronto in June, 2022. This was followed up with a second solo exhibit in Ottawa at Studio Sixty Six in July 2023.

References

External links

CBC Biography

{{DEFAULTSORT:Petricic, Sasa Canadian television reporters and correspondents Carleton University alumni Living people Canadian people of Serbian descent Journalists from Toronto Journalists from Ottawa Journalists imprisoned in Turkey Hope College alumni Canadian Screen Award winning journalists 20th-century Canadian journalists 21st-century Canadian journalists Year of birth missing (living people) Canadian foreign correspondents