Jeffrey James is a global broadcast professional working across news, current affairs, business and entertainment television. He has anchored and produced for international networks and production houses in Europe, Asia and Australia. He is born in Sydney, Australia.
Jeffrey presented news, current affairs and business programming globally for Deutsche Welle Television International Germany, CNBC International, i24News Israel/USA re-broadcast daily on PBS primetime USA and Hong Kong’s TVB.
Since beginning in country radio in Australia in his late teens, he has produced and designed programming concepts across multiple broadcast genre encompassing music, news, current affairs and documentaries for what is an extensive and long career.
His interviews have included Australian Prime Ministers Bob Hawke, John Howard, Kevin Rudd and Malcolm Turnbull, Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, the founding father of independent Malaysia Tunku Abdul Rahman (his first foreign asssignment) and Vietnamese President Nguyen Minh Triet. Interviews with business titans have included transport baron Lindsay Fox, retail giant Gerry Harvey, Rio Tinto Mining Chief Tom Albanese and firebrand telecoms Chief Sol Trajillo who headed Telstra Australia during an intensely fractious relationship with the government-in-power ending in a similarly fractious departure from Australia some years later!
He has interviewed show business legends from Sammy Davis Jnr. to Peter Allen to the Bee Gees. He interviewed reclusive Asian superstar Danny Chan – in English – one year before his death during an Australian concert tour.
Investigative reporting and journalism have taken him to the southern Philippines where he interviewed the leader of a notorious Abu Sayaf rebel group who admitted responsibility for multiple executions of passengers during at-sea pirate attacks on inter-island vessels. Jeffrey ignored warnings from the Australian Embassy in Manila not to proceed with the interview as he would be a prime target of kidnap. Of lesser danger, in a Sydney bar known for its criminal clientele, he interviewed a a group of house burglars who were about to embark on a break-in and waited for them to return with the loot to explain their mission and its rewards. Sydney Police were unimpressed by the segment but the audience were astonished as the thieves provided detailed advice on home security!
His hallmark pieces have been exclusive interviews with Li Chu Wen, China’s representative to Hong Kong during British negotiations for the 1997 Hong Kong handover who provided new information on China’s precise territorial claims and plans for the territory. Jeffrey secured a rare interview with Mother Teresa of Calcutta (Saint Teresa) in early years for radio. The interview was to define his interview style. After Mother Teresa insisted her assistants prepare food for Jeffrey ]belielving he was hungry, they sat in a room together and Jeffrey ignored pre-written questions choosing to ad-lib the entire interview asking, “What makes you so good? Why are you so good? Why can’t I be as good as you and do tht things you to help the people in the greatest of need and why can’t I do that? Why are you so good??? The interview from then on explored an unusual approach surprising Jeffrey and perhaps Mother Teresa and was broadcast across Australia on the 2SM Network to much acclaim.
Many years later, following his departure from CNBC after hosting the international network’s first global programme of the each business day from purpose-built studios in Sydney, an impending revamping of the network’s program re-structuring seemed an opportune time to move on to new opportunities in Asia. He mentioned CNBC as ‘the best’ and one of his most thrilling broadcast experiences in a long career. He re-located to Beijing for one year and explored on-camera opportunities ‘in English’. Honoured to be offered a key anchoring role with Chinese global networkCGTN, personal issues prevented the deal from progressing. He remains passionate about telling the China story and about China itself having first visited at age 22. He has a particular interest in China and other Asian-regional nations and worked extensively within Asia. He continues to enjoy close relations with Chinese broadcasters.
Moving on from China, he spent several years designing, producing and advising both corporations and broadcasters in Asia. He also spent blocks of time producing sponsored features for several large corporations in Asia, primarily hi-end corporate material on medicine for several prominent international hospitals.
He arrived in Sydney ten days before Australia closed its borders as Covid ravaged the world. “Whilst waiting out Covid”, he worked independently on the design of a number of projects, principally ‘Dragon Warrior’ and ‘China Music’. ‘Covid had stoppped everything but creativity doesn’t die and I found this time quite rewarding in being able to concentrate on the development of new projects and ideas. But scary, it was…”
Before being approached by CNBC to be the face of their new Australian based global programming in 2008, Jeffrey lived in Berlin and London and worked for iconic broadcaster, Deutsche Welle where he presented the business component of DW-TV’s flagship news programme, ‘The Journal’, re-broadcast by 5000 television operations world-wide including US network PBS. He became one of the most popular and best known faces of the Geerman network and spent seven years based between Berlin and London.
Jeffrey’s production credits include high-end investigative documentary series, including PIRATES, produced for Beyond Productions, and the SBS-TV Cutting Edge documentary, ‘The Embraced’.
Jeffrey began his career in Australian regional radio with 8HA in Alice Springs, in the centre of Australia moving on to music television as presenter of various programmes for Channel 7, Sydney. He was attracted to and passionate about broadcast since being a child. In the 90s Jeffrey worked with Nine Network Australia and with ABC as Segment Producer and Associate Producer with network star interviewers, Mike Walsh and Ray Martin. He was drawn to the art of the interview and learned hugely from both iconic broadcast figures.
In 2018, the Australian Film and Television Archive featured some 200 hours of Jeffrey’s historic broadcasting work both in radio and television. He has been based and lived in Hong Kong, London, Berlin, Beijing, Auckland and Tel Aviv.
Jeffrey attended Trinity Grammar and St. Andrews Cathedral School in Sydney and studied music, speech and drama.
He has perfect pitch and studied classical music from an early age sitting exams by London’s Trinity College of Music. He has written prose since his teens and in Germany developed – together with a two composers – a spoken word musical album called ‘The Day Before Goodbye’. He continues to write prose.
Music has been a driving force and Jeffrey spent his earliest professional years hosting music television programmes for Australia’s Seven Network. It was after this period, that he became attracted to news and factual television, but he is clear that his early show business days shine through the stories and journalism that he has been a part of.
Jeffrey has a strong interest in psychoanalysis. He is passionate about Asia and especially by China and its development. At age 22 he travelled across China by train. A great love of Hong Kong and the magical land beyond the pre-1997 border began a life long fascination with China. After his time with CNBC he moved and lived in Beijing for one year.
He has visited 50 countries, some on many occasions and many having been work-related of which he returned at a later date. He crossed the Panama Canal at age 20 whilst working for a Russian cruise line as a junior entertainment officer and has joined a charter-flight from Sydney to the Antarctic a the Qantast 747 flew at very low altitude over Mawson Station as scientists came outside the station to wave at the large rare visitor. His job at such a young age on the ship, MV Leonid Sobinov ended in Southampton where he resigned and spent four months living in London spending time also in Paris. His declaration that he would make a home. in London was realised many year later when he departed Sydney for the London and seven years later, whilst working with Deutsche Welle’s DW-TV anchoring English programming, became a British citizen, whilst retaining his Australian citizenship.
He spent three years during the Covid pandemic living in Sydney before returning to travels in Europe with extended stays in China, Thailand, Malaysia and Vietnam. During this time he has participated in corporate advisory roles and worked as a news presenter with the Israeli/US network i24News based in Tel Aviv.
Jeffrey has social media presence only on X as @jeffreyjamestv
