Mark Colvin
British-Australian journalist and broadcaster
Mark Colvin (13 March 1952 – 11 May 2017) was an Australian journalist and radio and television broadcaster for the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC), and worked on most of the flagship current affairs programs. Notably, based in Sydney, he was the presenter of PM— the radio current affairs program on the ABC Radio network — from 1997 to 2017.
Biography
Career as a journalist and broadcaster
Colvin graduated from Christ Church, Oxford University, with a Bachelor of Arts (Hons) in English literature and arrived in Australia in 1974. With no clear career ambitions and failing as a builder's labourer, being susceptible to heat stroke in the strong Australian sun, the dole office steered him toward journalism. In that year he commenced a traineeship with the ABC but had doubts during the year that he would stick with journalism. Nevertheless, in January 1975 he commenced at the ABC's rock music station Double Jay (2JJ, now known as Triple J) as one of the foundation staff, initially working as a cadet journalist. While at 2JJ, he presented news, conducted interviews, and produced current affairs and documentary specials until 1978. With strong foreign language skills in French, Italian and Spanish, he was posted to the Canberra bureau and was appointed a television news producer. A year later he was one of the first reporters on Nationwide, along with Jenny Brockie, Paul Murphy, and Andrew Olle.
In 1980, at the age of 28, Colvin was appointed foreign correspondent in London, and travelled to cover major stories, including the American hostage crisis in Tehran and the rise of Solidarity in Poland.
“Mark Colvin” enters the record as british-Australian journalist and broadcaster. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Mark, Colvin and British-Australian can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Mark Colvin” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Mark, Colvin and British-Australian provides the most credible route into that argument.
The entry’s evidential value lies in the named roles, institutions and publications that can be tested against primary documentation. The source revision retrieved here is dated Mar 31, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q6767124. VIAF identifies the subject as 4451150085882415060008. The Library of Congress control number is no2019027774. 2 of 3 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1952, 2017, 1997 and 1974.
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This entry incorporates text from “Mark Colvin” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.