Anton Enus: “The apartheid masters did everything they could to exert pressure on the organisation to conform to the message they wanted to send out.”
Back on our screens after being diagnosed with bowel cancer two years ago, Anton Enus says the whole experience changed him as a person and a journalist. Despite being quite private Anton documented his treatment on Facebook and for SBS online, allowing himself to become the story, he said it was cathartic. Anton has been at SBS for 20 years but started out unexpectedly while looking for freelance work while on holiday. Hailing from South Africa he worked for the South African Broadcasting Corporation during the apartheid regime which he called a moral compromise. It was just one of the times Anton had to swallow his pride growing up classified as ‘cape coloured’. Another was having to get special permission to study journalism at a white only university. He corrects the record on being outed by South African and Australian media, the role of public broadcasting in the face of government pressure and taking over from Lee Lin Chin as the SBS weekend newsreader.
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Barrie Cassidy: “There are more partisan journalists (now) than there ever were in the past”
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Hedley Thomas: “I didn’t lose control, but I was worried that I couldn’t do justice to the scale of the story, the magnitude, the importance of it.”
Ben Fordham: “You do need to protect yourself… do I want that rattling around in my head? The answer I’ve learned is no.”
Ed Kavalee: “Be the weirdo you are off air, on air.”
George Negus: “I don’t think I’m much of a reporter to be honest.”
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