June 2020

Chris Livesay is a CBS News foreign correspondent based in Rome, contributing to all CBS News broadcasts and platforms. Livesay, a journalist with experience covering hotspots across Europe and the Middle East, joined CBS News in 2020, and began reporting for the Network at the height of the COVID-19 outbreak in Italy. He provided extensive coverage across that country throughout the pandemic.

In March, Livesay was the first reporter for an American television network to go inside an ICU in Italy when the country was at the epicenter of the crisis, with doctors inside the hospitals turning scuba masks into ventilators as supplies ran low. He has reported from northern Italy where cemeteries couldn’t keep up with the number of bodies. Livesay also found bright spots amid the suffering; in Venice, he spoke with volunteers who delivered supplies to those in need in gondolas via the city’s famous canals. He also reported from Venice that nature is flourishing, with streets and canals nearly empty of people and transportation.

Before joining CBS News, Livesay reported around the globe for NBC News, PBS NewsHour, PBS Frontline and NPR News. He brings to CBS News a wealth of international experience having covered a number of major stories with global impact, such as the targeted killing of Iranian General Qassim Soleimani, the protests in Hong Kong and the priest sex abuse scandals at the Vatican. In 2018, he was the first American TV correspondent to report from Libya in almost a year and had to flee the country amid government threats for shedding light on migrant trafficking, torture and abuse. In 2016, he was among the first TV journalists to report from Mosul on the front lines of the Iraqi military’s push to remove ISIS.

Livesay got his start in journalism by volunteering at his local NPR-affiliated radio station KJZZ in Phoenix, Ariz., and later filed reports for “All Things Considered” and “Morning Edition.”

He holds bachelor’s degrees in Italian and art history from Arizona State University and a master’s degree with the highest honors from Columbia’s Graduate School of Journalism in New York City. Livesay lives in Rome with his wife.