All Media - Broadcast Interviewing - Winner

Tony Jones, Lateline, ABC TV, "Tony Jones Interviews"

A consummate interviewer, Tony Jones joined the ABC as a radio current affairs cadet working on AM, PM and The World Today. In 1985 he was seconded to Four Corners as a reporter and in 1986 he joined the Dateline program on SBS. Tony returned a year later to the ABC, reporting for Four Corners.

In 1990, he went to London as the TV current affairs correspondent, covering such stories as the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe, the reunification of Germany, the Gulf War, the war in the former Yugoslavia, the fall of Kabul in Afghanistan to the Mujaheddin and the collapse of the apartheid system in South Africa.

Jones has hosted Lateline since 1999. This is his fourth Walkley; his previous wins include the 2004 Walkley for broadcast interviewing.

Jones submitted three interviews in his winning entry.

In June he jousted with Northern Territory Chief Minister Clare Martin, against the backdrop of a year of Lateline reporting on Indigenous issues. Three days after the interview the prime minister announced his emergency intervention.

Also in June, Jones faced off with former prime minister Paul Keating, whose savage critique of Labor’s new faces and new policies launched many a scathing soundbite.

Finally, Jones cross-examined British film-maker Martin Durkin, exposing the inaccuracies in Durkin’s The Great Global Warming Swindle, which denied the science behind global warming.

Judges’ comments

Jones dealt with news-breaking issues in a relentless and deft fashion that broke new ground. He showed mastery in interviewing technique, which enabled him to cut to the issues in hand and did not allow deflection on the part of the interviewee. He used whatever research assistance he had with extraordinary adeptness.