Tony Jones | |
---|---|
Born |
Anthony William Jones 13 November 1955 |
Nationality | Australian |
Education |
Newington College St Paul's College, University of Sydney |
Occupation | Television presenter and journalist |
Employer | Australian Broadcasting Corporation |
Known for | Lateline, Dateline, Q&A |
Spouse(s) | Sarah Ferguson (1993–present) |
Anthony William "Tony" Jones (born 13 November 1955) is an Australian television news and political journalist, and television presenter.
Jones attended Newington College from 1970 to 1974 and the University of Sydney as a resident of St Paul's College, where he studied English and later anthropology from 1975 to 1977.
Jones joined the Australian Broadcasting Corporation 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. In 1986, he went to the Dateline program on SBS. He returned to the ABC in 1987, reporting for Four Corners.
In 1990, Jones went to London as the ABC's current affairs correspondent. He covered the collapse of the USSR in Eastern Europe, the Gulf War, the war in the former Yugoslavia, the fall of Kabul to the Mujahadin and the collapse of apartheid. Jones returned to Australia in 1993 as Executive Producer of the Foreign Correspondent program. From 1994 to 1996, he was the ABC's correspondent in Washington, D.C., before returning to Foreign Correspondent in 1997. He also covered the war crimes in Bosnia. In mid-1998 he returned to Four Corners.
Jones has hosted ABC TV's Lateline news and current affairs program since 1999. In 2011, he hosts the show on Wednesday and Thursday nights. He also hosts the ABC's Q&A political panel discussion show.
Jones is one of Australia's most well known journalists, winning four awards including four of Australia's leading journalism awards, the Walkleys. 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." Crikey also put much of the success of Lateline to Jones, stating, "Lateline without Jones is a perfectly adequate late night news review; with Jones it is a world-class piece of television."