Interview with Anand Naidoo

As a graduate of the School of Journalism and Media Studies at Rhodes University, Anand Naidoo has flown the flag high for South African broadcast journalism. He began his career as a newspaper journalist at the now-defunct Rand Daily Mail, but began his broadcast career in Belgium, where he worked as a field producer for Belgian television as well as producer and anchor for the Belgian Radio World Service. Anand also worked as a news editor on Radio 702, and as a presenter on M-Net. In the mid-1990s he was the principal evening news anchor for the SABC in Johannesburg. In 1997 Anand relocated to Atlanta, USA to take up the roles of anchor, correspondent and editor on CNN. For ten years he anchored CNN’s flagship in-depth news analysis shows, including Insight and Q & A. His anchoring duties were interspersed with several foreign reporting assignments. Anand was a member of the CNN staff when the network was awarded a Peabody award for coverage of the Hurricane Katrina disaster and an Alfred I. du Pont/Columbia University award for coverage of the Asian Tsunami. In 2007 Anand moved to Al Jazeera as news anchor and reporter, hosting Inside Story. In 2012 he moved to CGTN America where he anchors a daily talk/interview show called The Heat. In April 2015, Anand was awarded the Bronze Medal for Best News Anchor by the New York Festivals International TV and Film Awards, for a report on the rise of anti-Semitism in Europe. In 2018 he was again awarded the Bronze Medal at the NY Festivals for an interview with John Nixon, the CIA agent who interrogated Saddam Hussein shortly after the former Iraqi leader’s capture by US forces