Foreign Correspondents

Michael Keats is a journalist with more than 50 years experience as a foreign correspondent and in editorial management. In his career, he reported from 88 of the 193 member countries of the United Nations. He began his career in 1952 as a copyboy with the now defunct Argus newspaper and then as a cadet reporter with Australian United Press (AUP) news agency. He later went to Brisbane to work on the Brisbane Telegraph (also defunct) and in the Queensland Network newsroom of the 4BC group of radio stations.

He left Australia for Europe in 1956 and joined the US agency United Press in London – which became United Press International (UPI), and travelled through Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Asia as a foreign correspondent for the next 35 years – covering the major events of that era, including conflicts in the Congo, Angola, Mozambique, Rhodesia, Lebanon, Afghanistan.

In 1991, he left UPI to work as a UN spokesman/press officer in Africa then in the Balkans during fighting in Bosnia-Hercegovina before becoming managing editor of Inter Press Service (IPS) – a news agency providing contextualised news and analyses on global issues as they affect the developing world.

In early 2000, Mike went to Kosovo, after the 1999 invasion of Serbia by NATO forces, as the public information officer for UNMIK - the UN administration in that territory. He then went to Geneva in 2002, to head the press unit of the International Labor Organisation and later served in their Washington office as spokesman for North America.

Eleanor Hall is the voice of ABC Radio’s The World Today at lunchtime, which delivers national and international news and analysis to more than a million listeners nationally, throughout the region and online. She is also a presenter on The Drum on ABC television.

She made her professional home at the ABC after working and studying in the United States as a recipient of the Harkness Fellowship and earned her Master’s in journalism from Columbia University in New York.

More recently, she studied for a term at Oxford at the Reuters Institute where she submitted a paper on Barack Obama’s e-campaign and politics in the Youtube age. With more than 20 years experience as a television and radio journalist, including as a Washington correspondent, in the Canberra press gallery, on Lateline, Foreign Correspondent and 7.30, Eleanor has reported with intelligence and compassion from all corners of the globe.

Cameron Forbes has been foreign editor, Europe correspondent and Asia correspondent for the Age and Washington correspondent for the Australian. He has reported on rebellions, civil wars and wars in Northern Ireland, Portugal, Sri Lanka, South Africa, Bougainville, the Philippines, Burma, the Middle East, Afghanistan and Rwanda.

He has won the Canadian Award for Journalistic Merit, the United Nations Association Media Peace Award, the Perkin Award for Journalist of the Year and the 2010 Walkley Award for the Most Outstanding Contribution to Journalism. He is author of Hellfire: The Story of Australia, Japan and the Prisoners of War, Under the Volcano: The Story of Bali and The Korean War: Australia in the Giants’ Playground.

His latest book, Australia on Horseback: The Story of the Horse and the Making of Australia, will be published in October.

Tony Clifton spent 40 years working as a foreign correspondent, covering conflicts around the world for publications like Newsweek and the London Sunday Times.

Tony began as cadet in Benalla in 1956. He was first shot at (by an IRA sniper) while working for London Sunday Times, 1969. In Biafra, he was arrested at gunpoint for reporting and deported.

For Newsweek, he reported wars while based in England, Lebanon, Hong Kong, United States and India. He covered the India–Pakistan war of 1971 which resulted in formation of Bangladesh.

During a five-year period from late 1970 to 1975, he covered the wars of that period: Vietnam., Cambodia Laos, as well as Muslim insurrections in the Philippines. He moved to Beirut in 1971 and lived there through the Lebanon civil war, ending his stay in 1982 when Israel invaded Lebanon. He wrote God Cried about that war.

He also spent considerable time in Iran and Iraq at that time, covering fall of Shah, rise of Khomeini, and the vicious war between Iran and Iraq (he saw frontline action from both sides). He was in Tiananmen Square in Beijing, then later in Shanghai during crackdown on student protestors.

He covered the first Gulf War in 1991, moving forward with tanks of the US army’s Tiger Brigade from Saudi Arabia into Kuwait. He was in Kabul to report the Taliban take-over. And he was in Sri Lanka for the civil war against the Tamil Tigers.

The last war he covered in depth was the Indo-Pakistan ‘war in the mountains’ of 1998, where he fought in the foothills of the Himalayas. This was the first war fought between nuclear armed countries.

Although Australian, he spent most of his 40 years on the road reporting for English and American papers, so has never seen the Australian military in action.