Peter Cave (born 1952) is an Australian journalist. He retired as Foreign Affairs Editor for the

Australian Broadcasting Corporation The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) is Australia’s principal public service broadcaster. It is funded primarily by grants from the federal government and is administered by a government-appointed board of directors. The ABC is ...

in July 2012.

Early life and education

Peter Cave was born in 1952 in

Newcastle, New South Wales Newcastle, also commonly referred to as Greater Newcastle ( ; ), is a large Metropolitan area, metropolitan area and the second-most-populous such area of New South Wales, Australia. It includes the cities of City of Newcastle, Newcastle and Ci ...

. He grew up in Waratah West as one of four children of Frederick David and Betty Cave. His father was an industrial galvaniser and his mother was a nurse. He attended

Newcastle Boys High School Newcastle Boys' High School was a government-funded single-sex selective high school, located in Waratah, a suburb of Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia. The school was active between 1929 and 1976, after which time it became a co-education ...

Career

At 18 he gained a cadetship with the then

Australian Broadcasting Commission The Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) is Australia’s principal public service broadcaster. It is funded primarily by grants from the federal government and is administered by a government-appointed board of directors. The ABC is a ...

in Sydney. By 1974 he was working for Macquarie National News when he was flown into Darwin to cover the aftermath of

Cyclone Tracy Severe Tropical Cyclone Tracy was a small but destructive tropical cyclone that devastated the city of Darwin, Northern Territory, Darwin, in the Northern Territory of Australia, in December 1974. The small but developing easterly storm was or ...

. He then re-joined the ABC where his first major international assignment was the

Coconut War The Coconut War was a brief clash between Papua New Guinean soldiers and rebels in Espiritu Santo shortly before and after the independence of the Republic of Vanuatu was declared on 30 July 1980. Background Prior to Vanuatu's independence ...

in The

New Hebrides New Hebrides, officially the New Hebrides Condominium () and named after the Hebrides in Scotland, was the colonial name for the island group in the South Pacific Ocean that is now Vanuatu. Native people had inhabited the islands for three th ...

. His first overseas posting was to Japan (1983–1986). He later became the chief correspondent for Europe and the Middle East based in London (1987–1992) and then bureau chief in Washington (1996–97). He returned to Australia to be the presenter of

AM (ABC Radio) ''AM'' is an Australian radio program. It is the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's flagship current affairs radio program, aired each morning on both the ABC Radio National and ABC Local Radio networks. First broadcast on 4 September 1967, ...

before becoming Foreign Affairs Editor. In his career with the ABC he has also reported on the end of

apartheid Apartheid ( , especially South African English: , ; , ) was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia) from 1948 to the early 1990s. It was characterised by an ...

in South Africa, the Palestinian

intifada Intifada () is an Arabic word for a rebellion or uprising, or a resistance movement. It can also be used to refer to a civilian uprising against oppression.Ute Meinel''Die Intifada im Ölscheichtum Bahrain: Hintergründe des Aufbegehrens von 19 ...

in the Occupied Territories,

glasnost ''Glasnost'' ( ; , ) is a concept relating to openness and transparency. It has several general and specific meanings, including a policy of maximum openness in the activities of state institutions and freedom of information and the inadmissi ...

and

perestroika ''Perestroika'' ( ; rus, перестройка, r=perestrojka, p=pʲɪrʲɪˈstrojkə, a=ru-perestroika.ogg, links=no) was a political reform movement within the Communist Party of the Soviet Union (CPSU) during the late 1980s, widely associ ...

in the former Soviet Union, the break-up of the

former Yugoslavia The Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (commonly abbreviated as SFRY or SFR Yugoslavia), known from 1945 to 1963 as the Federal People's Republic of Yugoslavia, commonly referred to as Socialist Yugoslavia or simply Yugoslavia, was a country ...

and wars in Slovenia, Croatia, Bosnia, Kosovo and Lebanon, two

Gulf war , combatant2 = , commander1 = , commander2 = , strength1 = Over 950,000 soldiers3,113 tanks1,800 aircraft2,200 artillery systems , page = https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/GAOREPORTS-PEMD-96- ...

s, the fall of

President Suharto Suharto (8 June 1921 – 27 January 2008) was an Indonesian military officer and politician, and dictator, who was the second and longest serving president of Indonesia, serving from 1967 to 1998. His 32 years rule, characterised as authoritar ...

in Indonesia, the civil unrest in East Timor, the first

Bali Bombing Bali bombings can refer to either of two separate incidents on the Indonesian island of Bali: * The 2002 Bali bombings, 12 October 2002 in the tourist district of Kuta * The 2005 Bali bombings The 2005 Bali bombings were a series of terroris ...

, three Fijian Coups,

the troubles The Troubles () were an ethno-nationalist conflict in Northern Ireland that lasted for about 30 years from the late 1960s to 1998. Also known internationally as the Northern Ireland conflict, it began in the late 1960s and is usually deemed t ...

in Northern Ireland, the

2011 Egyptian revolution The 2011 Egyptian revolution, also known as the 25 January Revolution (;), began on 25 January 2011 and spread across Egypt. The date was set by various youth groups to coincide with the annual Egyptian "Police holiday" as a statement against ...

, the

2011 Libyan civil war The Libyan civil war, also known as the First Libyan Civil War and Libyan Revolution, was an armed conflict in 2011 in the North African country of Libya that was fought between forces loyal to Colonel Muammar Gaddafi and rebel groups that were ...

. and the uprising in Syria. Peter has helped his fellow foreign correspondents with trauma training and peer support. He "helped pioneer the ABC's groundbreaking peer trauma support scheme." In 2009 he was awarded an Ochberg Fellowship by the

Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma The Dart Center for Journalism and Trauma is a resource center and think tank for journalists who cover violence, conflict and tragedy around the world. A project of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism in New York City, the Dart C ...

attending the Atlanta, Georgia fellowship meeting and the

International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies The International Society for Traumatic Stress Studies is a professional association established on March 2, 1985, in Washington, D.C. It aims to disseminate the state of the science as it pertains to the effects of trauma. History The organizati ...

conference.

Walkley Awards

Cave has won six

Walkley Award The annual Walkley Awards are presented in Australia to recognise and reward excellence in journalism. They cover all media including print, television, documentary, radio, photographic and online media. The Gold Walkley is the highest prize and ...

s, Australian journalism's most prestigious accolades.

1989 Awards

Cave was an ABC Radio reporter in Beijing in June 1989. Cave had been there for about a month interviewing the students, intellectuals and labour activists and had filed reports on "two half-hearted attempts" by the military to disperse the demonstrators and had a room with a balcony overlooking Beijing's Tiananmen Square. He has later said: "Just about everyone else had decided it was over and packed up," when at "about one in the morning I got a phone call from a colleague who had seen them run over a couple of people. I pulled back the blinds and saw an armoured personnel carrier go up and over a barricade and kill two people on bikes." With gunfire in the background he reported on the

Tiananmen Square massacre The Tiananmen Square protests, known within China as the June Fourth Incident, were student-led demonstrations held in Tiananmen Square in Beijing, China, lasting from 15 April to 4 June 1989. After weeks of unsuccessful attempts between t ...

. Cave won two awards for his reporting: the best radio news report award and the currents affairs award. Cave was "commended for outstanding journalism under particularly difficult circumstances".

1990 Award

Cave was the London-based European correspondent for the ABC when he reported from Berlin on the fall of the

Berlin Wall The Berlin Wall (, ) was a guarded concrete Separation barrier, barrier that encircled West Berlin from 1961 to 1989, separating it from East Berlin and the East Germany, German Democratic Republic (GDR; East Germany). Construction of the B ...

. His coverage won him his third Walkley, this time for best news report.

2004 Awards

Cave was on assignment in Iraq for the ABC on the outskirts of Baghdad when he, his cameraman, Michael Cox, and the driver and translator, were ordered by armed masked men to approach their car: in the back seat was an American hostage, Thomas Hamill a civilian truck driver. "The only thing that saved us was the quick thinking of our fixer , who told them we were Russians so they'd use us for propaganda rather than as hostages." Cave was allowed to speak to Hamill and the resulting report was an international exclusive;

Michael Moore Michael Francis Moore is an American film director, producer, screenwriter, and author. Moore's work frequently addresses various Social issue, social, political, and economic topics. He first became publicly known for his award-winning debut ...

used some of the footage in

Fahrenheit 9/11 ''Fahrenheit 9/11'' is a 2004 American documentary film directed, written by, and starring Michael Moore. The subjects of the film are the presidency of George W. Bush, the Iraq War, and the media's coverage of the war. In the film, Moore state ...

. Cave won two Walkley Awards for the story: one for the radio news report, another for his television news report .

2012 Award

Walkley Award for Most Outstanding Contribution to Journalism The Walkley Award for Outstanding Contribution to Journalism, formerly Walkley Award for Most Outstanding Contribution to Journalism, is one of the prestigious Australian Walkley Awards, and "recognises the achievements of a person or group for ...

Walkleys booklet 2012 http://www.walkleys.com/files/media/WalkleyAwardWinners2012Booklet.pdf

Family life

Peter is married and has two adult sons.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Cave, Peter ABC radio (Australia) journalists and presenters People educated at Newcastle Boys' High School Walkley Award winners People from Newcastle, New South Wales 1952 births Living people