Caroline Jones AO (b. 1938), writer and broadcaster, joined the ABC in Canberra in 1963. Five years later, the young woman from Murrurundi, NSW, became a household name in Australia as the first female reporter on the ABC current affairs program This Day Tonight (1968–1972). She went on to become the first woman presenter on Four Corners, remaining on the program until 1981, while also broadcasting regularly on Sydney morning radio. On her Radio National show, The Search for Meaning, broadcast from 1987 to 1994, she became renowned for the gentle tact with which she drew out the stories of Australian men and women. Four books were published by the ABC from transcripts of these interviews. Jones then presented the weekly biographical television show Australian Story for two decades from 1996 until 2016. A foundation member of the Australia Council for the Arts, she has been a Reconciliation Ambassador for the Aboriginal Council for Reconciliation since 1998. That year, her book An Authentic Life: Finding Meaning and Spirituality in Everyday Life was an Australian bestseller. Her next book, Through a Glass Darkly (2009) is a heartrending chronicle of her experience of the death of her father. Now a patron of the national mentoring and networking initiative, Women in Media, Jones won the Walkley Award for Outstanding Contribution to Journalism in 2013, and received an honorary doctorate from the University of Sydney in 2017.
Collection: National Portrait Gallery
Gift of the artist 2009
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