Bob Dietz

Biographical Information
"Since 1977, Bob Dietz has worked as a journalist in Africa, the Middle East, Asia, and the United States. He started as a freelance journalist in Tanzania, moving to Uganda after the departure of Idi Amin, and then to Somalia in 1981. He was a cameraman and bureau chief in Cairo and Beirut for Visnews, now Reuters TV, covering the Israeli invasion of Lebanon and its aftermath. He moved to Asia as a bureau chief for NBC News in Seoul and then in Manila, where he opened the network's bureau shortly before the downfall of the Marcos regime. In 1988, he was awarded a William Benton Fellowship for Broadcast Journalists at the University of Chicago, studying international relations. He later served as interim general manager for a start-up PBS station in his hometown of Philadelphia, before working for the newly launched CNN International in Atlanta. In 1995, Dietz moved to Hong Kong with his wife, Donna Liu, who opened CNNI's Asia Production Center. After seven years as a senior editor at Asiaweek magazine, he returned to the United States and worked with the World Health Organization, handling media relations and risk communication during the SARS and avian influenza outbreaks. WHO assignments took Dietz to Beijing, Manila, Hanoi, Geneva, New Delhi, Phnom Penh, and Indonesia's Aceh province following the December 2004 tsunami. While at WHO, he worked closely with local and foreign reporters across Asia. Since starting at CPJ in January 2006, Dietz has continued to travel widely in Asia, including reporting trips and CPJ missions to Afghanistan, China and Hong Kong, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, and Thailand."


 * Asia Program Coordinator, Committee to Protect Journalists