Mark Colvin
Mark Colvin has been the presenter of ABC Radio’s long-running national daily current affairs program ‘PM’ since 1997.
For more than 35 years, he has covered national and international stories for the ABC. In 1980 he reported from Iran on the US hostage crisis and the violent struggles for power in the country in the wake of the Khomeini revolution.
As Europe correspondent he reported on the late stages of the Cold War, including the rise of Solidarity in Poland, and the ground-breaking talks between Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev. Later, he reported from Serbia and Bosnia for Foreign Correspondent, and made a series of films about crime, corruption and politics in ‘90s Italy.
In 1994, on a trip to Zaire and Rwanda to cover the Hutu-Tutsi massacres, Mark contracted a chronic and life-threatening disease which put him in hospital for many months and ultimately put an end to his in-the field reporting career. As presenter of PM, he keeps a close eye on national and international politics and uses his experience and historical knowledge to give some perspective to the stories of the day.
Articles by Mark Colvin
A journalist kicking it old school on Twitter
One steamy night in February 1974, I went with friends to hear the great blues guitarist B.B. King in concert…... Read more
How Berlusconi blew Italy’s chance to come clean
They called it Tangentopoli. ‘Tangenti’ is one of the Italian words for ‘bribes’, and Tangentopoli summed up the idea that…... Read more
Danger in denial: Too soon to revel in Egypt’s revolution
The ABC’s London bureau was effectively in mourning when I arrived as a correspondent at the beginning of 1980. Tony…... Read more
The Korean War never ended
The Korean War stopped for practical purposes in 1953, but technically, it never ended. This is a matter of theory…... Read more
Waterboarding: ceding moral high ground to the enemy
Tuol Sleng is a name, like Auschwitz or the Gulag, which should strike horror into the heart. Tuol Sleng was…... Read more
How ASIO got it right during a time it got so much wrong
I’ve written before about how, at the age of 25, I discovered that my father was a very senior member…... Read more
When quiet diplomacy equals silence on human rights
While you’re watching the Commonwealth Games closing ceremony tonight, take a moment to look at the VIP box. The first…... Read more
Taking the twit out of Twitter and finding value
A challenge from a former Howard Government spin-doctor on Twitter this week set me to thinking, not for the first…... Read more
Dialysis sure beats dying, but a kidney would be better
I’m writing this in the renal unit of the Prince of Wales Hospital in Sydney’s south. I’m typing with my…... Read more
We need to get over our poll addiction
Australia really needs to do something about its addiction to opinion polls. The week following the election, just like the…... Read more
Stop the world, I want to get off
The debate about whether Tony Abbott should or should not have been able to answer questions about peak internet speeds…... Read more
Freedom’s just another word
‘Vox pops’ are among the staples of daily journalism. Little snippets of public opinion, they don’t prove anything about the…... Read more
Quality journalism exposes the counter-terror industry
The plummeting sales of newspapers worldwide have brought about an epidemic of soul-searching about the future of journalism: do people…... Read more
The internet is making us more adaptable, not dumber
I’m looking at a series of pictures by the photographer Robbie Cooper, and they’re making me think about computers, the…... Read more
Disproving the porky that Shakespeare was Bacon
I probably know as much as anyone reading these words about the life of William Shakespeare. That’s not the boast…... Read more
Ostraya, a lucky winner of the linguistic lottery
The expulsion of an Israeli diplomat this week took me back more than a quarter of a century, to the…... Read more
Are we witnessing the strange death of Labour England
I’ve never joined a political party: but a long time ago I did run as a political party candidate. For…... Read more
How a black cloud was lifted in an impoverished land
Let me tell you the story of Shane Dolan. I met him two decades ago, when I was in Ethiopia…... Read more
How Cameron and the good old boys could still lose
More than eighty years separate the publication of Evelyn Waugh’s first novel and the Tory campaign for government in the…... Read more
Baseless attacks on Bob Geldof threaten foreign aid
One of the more unedifying spectacles on the world stage in the last fortnight has been the verbal dogfight between…... Read more
The chance conversation that helped Thatcher win her war
History looks inevitable because we’ve lived it; we think it happened that way because it had to happen that way.…... Read more
A democratic future for Iran? It’s too soon to tell
There’s a story, though it may be apocryphal, about Henry Kissinger and the Chinese leader Zhou EnLai. Kissinger was in…... Read more
Uncle Bruce, the former PM who made a life after politics
Listening to ABC Local Radio a few weeks ago, I heard the former Minister John Brown saying John Howard should…... Read more
If it doesn’t affect national security it’s not a sex scandal
I owe my sex education to Christine Keeler. Not directly of course: I was eleven years old at the time…... Read more
Recalling communism through its black jokes
I remember the jokes. They were usually about one of two things: hardship or fear. It’s been strange, this week,…... Read more
Iran, Twitter and the new media world
Note: The ABC’s Mark Colvin from the PM program gave this speech yesterday at the Media140 conference in Sydney. Since…... Read more
No guarantee that China is the next world superpower
I was a nineteen-year-old student, not yet a journalist, when I travelled through China during Mao Zedong’s Cultural Revolution. I…... Read more
Hand on heart, you should watch your kidneys
Put your hand on your heart. That was easy, wasn’t it? Now put your hand on your kidneys. ... Read more
Some key learnings about the debasement of language
I admit it: I’m in danger of being a language bore. I’m that guy who, when you say you’re ‘honing…... Read more
Digging up the past: Colvin and the Spiders from Mars
Reading history books about your youth makes you feel old. The discovery that archaeologists have got to work on the…... Read more
If I lived in the United States I’d be dead, or dead broke
Faced with the debate over President Obama’s project to overhaul American health care, I’m finding it difficult to maintain the…... Read more
70 years on, how Australia too was at war
An old newspaper can work like a telescope into the past, the details sharp but the whole picture a little…... Read more
The spy who loved me: how Dad came in from the cold
I was 25 when my father first told me he was a spy. It was 1977, and I was in…... Read more
Second Life? I’ve got enough on my plate with the first
These things I remember. I’m in a car, bumping along a stony track in the mountains, when suddenly, to the…... Read more
Why radio current affairs has a long, bright future
“News on the Radio”, said the American consultant breezily, “can never be more than a headline service”. The speaker was…... Read more
The death of Neda: Iran’s potent history of martyrdom
UPDATE June 25: The Twitter user quoted at length in this column reappeared after three days of silence, saying he…... Read more
Iranian bloodshed harks back to an earlier atrocity
The images we’ve been seeing of rioting and bloodshed in Tehran take me back almost three decades, to the northern…... Read more
Remembrance of things past: history without an airbrush
In the town of Caen, in Normandy, is one of the most remarkable museums I’ve ever visited. I went there…... Read more
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Advocating risk management is not “victim blaming”
In a world in which there are still people who subscribe to the vile notion that certain victims of sexual…
Nosebleed Section
choice ringside rantings
From: Hasbro, go straight to gaol, do not pass go
Tim says:
They should update other things in the game too. Instead of a get out of jail free card, they should have a Dodgy Lawyer card that not only gets you out of jail straight away but also gives you a fat payout in compensation for daring to arrest you in the first place. Instead of getting a hotel when you… [read more]From: A guide to summer festivals especially if you wouldn’t go
Kel says:
If you want a festival for older people or for families alike, get amongst the respectable punters at Bluesfest. A truly amazing festival experience to be had of ALL AGES. And all the young "festivalgoers" usually write themselves off on the first night, only to never hear from them again the rest of… [read more]Gentle jabs to the ribs
Superman needs saving
Can somebody please save Superman? He seems to be going through a bit of a crisis. Eighteen months ago,… Read more
