A graduate of the University of Sydney, Tony Jones joined the ABC as a radio current affairs cadet working on the AM, PM and The World Today programs. In 1985 he joined the Four Corners program as a reporter before joining Dateline on SBS the following year. He returned to the ABC in 1987 as a reporter for Four Corners.
In 1990, Jones went to London as the ABC’s current affairs correspondent, covering the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe, the Gulf War, the war in the former Yugoslavia, the fall of Kabul to the Mujahadin and the end of apartheid in South Africa. Jones returned to Australia in 1993 as Executive Producer of Foreign Correspondent. From 1994 to 1996 he was the ABC’s correspondent in Washington DC, before returning to Foreign Correspondent in 1997 and Four Corners a year later.
One of the country’s most acclaimed journalists, Crikey awarded him Outstanding Media Practitioner of the Year in 2005 for ‘ferocious intelligence, polite calmness, [being a] dogged interrogator, deep political instincts, juggling the running agenda, [and having] a great sense of context… Lateline without Tony Jones is a perfectly adequate late night news review; with Jones it is a world-class piece of television.’
