Jeffrey has presented news, current affairs, and business programming for Deutsche Welle Television Germany, CNBC International, i24News (Israel/USA), and Hong Kong’s HKTVB. His eight years of presenting with Deutsche Welle (DW-TV) were re-broadcast to almost 4,000 networks, including PBS (USA), in primetime and as an adjunct to that network’s national evening newscast.
Beginning his career in Australian regional radio in his late teens, he has since written, produced, and designed programming concepts across multiple broadcast genre, encompassing music, news, current affairs, and documentaries over what continues to be an extensive and long career.
He is especially well known as an interviewer.
Exclusive interviews have included Australian Prime Ministers Bob Hawke, John Howard, Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard and Malcolm Turnbull; Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong; Malaysia’s first post-colonial Prime Minister, Tunku Abdul Rahman; and Vietnamese President Nguyen Minh Triet. Business interviews have included General Electric titan, President and Chairman Jeff Immelt (at the time the most powerful business leader in the world), Rio Tinto Mining Chief, Tom Albanese, Lord Alastair McAlpine (Chairman of Britain’s Conservative Party), firebrand telecoms CEO Sol Trujillo, and—during his time with CNBC—virtually every prominent business leader in Australia and much of Asia.
He has interviewed entertainment legends from Sammy Davis Jr. to Peter Allen to the Bee Gees. He also secured an exclusive English-language interview with reclusive Asian superstar-singer Danny Chan, one year before Chan’s untimely death.
Investigative journalism took him to the southern Philippines for the Beyond Production’s series ‘Pirates’, created and co-produced by Jeffrey, where he secured after much negotiation and against warnings by the Australian Embassy of the high risk of kidnap, an interview with the the leader of a notorious separatist rebel group known for attacks on inter-island shipping. The group’s ‘Commander’ admitted on camera to regular executions aboard vessels the group boarded whilst looting the passengers. The large-scale budget project was a one year project made by Beyond and funded by France’s TF1 and Australia’s Seven Network.
He covered the 2004 Al-Qaeda attack on the Australian Embassy in Jakarta for Deutsche Welle. Jeffrey was living one block away from the embassy as the attack occurred: He told Deutsche Welle, “My building shook like an earthquake and I ran to the balcony and looked across to the Embassy and I could see only thick black smoke, above it, it seemed as if the sky as on fire!’ Later, he would reflect on the enormous sadness as he learned of the mass deaths of ordinary Indonesian citizens who had been queuing for visas at the front gate of the compound.
Among his hallmark pieces was a Walkley Awards-nominated exclusive interview secured for 2GB Macquarie with Li Chu Wen, China’s representative to Hong Kong during the Sino-British negotiations prior to 1997 Hong Kong handover, where Li revealed fresh details related to China’s territorial claims and plans for the then-British colony. Another career-defining moment came during the earliest days of his career, then in radio, after securing an interview with Mother Saint Teresa of Calcutta. The opportunity would be a turning point in his approach to interviewing, preferring an often personal and casual approach rather than a traditional structure. The interview was aired across Australia on the 2SM Network.
Years later, Jeffrey was chosen to anchor CNBC International’s first global business program out of Australia from a new studio centre constructed in Sydney. Two years later, the international network restructured their global programming dynamic, and Jeffrey moved on to Beijing to explore on-camera opportunities in China.
Educated at Trinity Grammar (Sydney) and St. Andrew’s Cathedral School (Sydney), he also studied classical music, speech, and drama. Gifted with perfect pitch, he undertook music grade exams under London’s Trinity College of accreditation achieving marks in the top two percent.
His passions are news, current affairs, media, television & film,geo-politics, with particular focus on north Asia, especially China. show business, entertainment, art and music. His musical taste is eclectic, ranging from Rachmaninoff Symphony Number 2—‘impossibly beautiful’—to BTS and Beyoncé.
In 2018, the Australian Film and Television Archive preserved 100+ hours of his historic work. He has lived and been based in Hong Kong, London, Berlin, Beijing, Auckland, and Tel Aviv.
Jeffrey’s sole social media presence is on X: @jeffreyjamestv.
