The Australian Women's Register

Summary

Debbie Whitmont graduated in Arts and Law from Sydney University and practised as a lawyer in legal aid and then for government.

She joined ABC television’s Four Corners as a researcher in 1986 and was later awarded a cadetship at the ABC. She worked in ABC News before spending a short time in commercial TV, as both a reporter and a producer.

Returning to Four Corners in 1989, she was a producer, reporter and later an Associate Producer. As a producer she won the Gold Medal at the New York Film Festival and was nominated for an Emmy Award for “The Forgotten Famine” (with Mark Colvin). She also won a Logie for “Other People’s Money” (with Paul Barry).

From 1993 to 1996 Debbie was ABC TV’s Middle East Correspondent, based in Jordan and then in Jerusalem; reporting from Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Egypt and Pakistan among others; filing stories for News, Foreign Correspondent, Lateline and The 7.30 Report.

Since 1998, Debbie has been a Four Corners reporter. She is the author of the book “An Extreme Event”, about the fatal 1998 Sydney to Hobart yacht race.

In 2003 she won a Walkley award for her Four Corners’ report “About Woomera”.

For two consecutive years Debbie has won the Human Rights Commission Award for Journalism: in 2002 for “Inside Story”, about the Villawood Detention Centre; and for her report “About Woomera” in 2003.

Events

• 2003

  TV Current Affairs, Feature, Documentary Or Special (More Than 20 Minutes), with Jo Puccini – ‘About Woomera’, Australian Broadcasting Corporation

  Walkley Award (Television)
• 2008

  Televsion Current Affairs, feature, documentary or Special (More than Twenty Minutes) with Morag Ramsay, ‘The Newman Case’, Four Corners ABC Television

  Walkley Award (All Media)
• 1986