ABC News has appointed multi-award-winning investigative journalist Sarah Ferguson as the new host of its evening current affairs program, 7.30, replacing Leigh Sales, who is leaving the program at the end of June.
"I'm delighted to take on the presenter role at 7.30," says Ferguson.
"Led by Leigh Sales and chief political correspondent Laura Tingle, the 7.30 team has created a powerhouse program, making superb current affairs journalism on the cutting edge of the genre. Working in collaboration with the inimitable Laura is irresistible. Adding myself into that mix sounds tremendously rewarding at a time when scrutiny of power is essential, when our social structures are undergoing profound change.
"On Leigh's departure, I'd like to say that her diligence and skill have made an enormous contribution to Australian journalism. What you don't see in her calm studio presence is the huge amount of work she does in preparation. It will be a pleasure to take over from such a pro.
"Public service journalism has to deliver for the Australian audience, all day, every day. No one in Australia should ever feel they have no voice. It's our job to show how public broadcasting can create a place for everyone to come and debate, think deeply, be thrilled, entertained and sometimes provoked. This is the opposite of seeking to polarise in ways we are seeing in media worldwide."
Sales, who has presented 7.30 for almost 12 years, announced on air in early February that she would be stepping down after the federal election and will take up another role with the ABC.
"7.30 is an incredibly important program and I welcome handing the reins to a journalist of Sarah's rigour and experience. I look forward to finishing up and joining the viewers of Australia to see where she takes it next," says Sales.
Ferguson has worked at the ABC since 2008, producing hard-hitting stories for Four Corners and award-winning documentaries, such as The Killing Season on the Rudd-Gillard years.
In 2014, she temporarily hosted 7.30 for six months when Sales was on leave and, most recently, has reported on international affairs as a foreign correspondent based in the ABC's Washington bureau.
"ABC audiences know and respect Sarah for her years of investigative journalism, insightful reporting and as a foreign correspondent," says ABC managing director David Anderson.
"Her work has set an unparalleled standard not only in Australian journalism but internationally, as evidenced by her recent reporting from Ukraine. Sarah is an exceptional appointment to take over 7.30 hosting duties from Leigh, alongside an outstanding team. 7.30 has been Australia's premier daily current affairs program for decades and will continue to be so with Sarah at the helm."
Newly appointed director of News Justin Stevens worked closely with Ferguson at Four Corners and as a producer on The Killing Season.
"Sarah Ferguson is one of this country's most formidable and experienced journalists. She is a forensic investigative journalist, a gifted storyteller and a truly fearsome interviewer," says Stevens.
"We're incredibly fortunate with the depth of talent we have at the ABC. Leigh Sales has done a superb job anchoring 7.30 for the past 12 years and to have someone of the calibre of Sarah Ferguson to take up the baton, working alongside Laura Tingle and the rest of the talented 7.30 team, is terrific news for audiences.
"The nightly role 7.30 plays in holding to account those in power is a key part of the democratic process and Sarah, along with the rest of the team, will ensure we continue the program's proud history of delivering agenda-setting public affairs journalism."
ABC News head of investigative and in-depth journalism John Lyons has known Ferguson since 2003, when, as executive producer of Channel Nine's Sunday program, he hired her to work on the program.
"Sarah's tenacity, journalistic integrity and humanity make her perfectly suited to this crucial role," says Lyons.
"With so many fractures in the Australian community and so much disinformation and toxicity on social media, never has it been more important to have journalists of the calibre of Sarah Ferguson asking tough questions and providing answers."
7.30 brings audiences a wide range of interviews with politicians, newsmakers and public figures and Ferguson is relishing the opportunity.
"Interviewing is one of the true thrills of journalism," says Ferguson.
"I hope to bring tenacity on the audience's behalf, as much skill as I can and fun. As well as engaging deeply with politics, culture and ideas, I'd like to enjoy it and have the audience enjoy it too."
The art of the interview
In 2017, after securing an exclusive interview with Hillary Clinton, Ferguson gave a fascinating insight into how she approaches an interview.
"The keys to interviewing are listening, curiosity and preparation, preparation. As the interview unfolds, lots of things happen and the most important thing in an interview is to listen. You're making a thousand decisions as you go: do I go down that path? No, because I'm not going to get far enough there so I'm going to have to drop that line of questioning and go onto that one.
"I've always said I would like to have a brain scan of an interviewer during a big interview because you are making so many decisions and there is a lot of crazy activity going on in a really short space of time and all while you're appearing, obviously, completely calm."
What drives Sarah Ferguson
Sarah Ferguson is intensely curious and that's what drew her to journalism.
"It is who I am and if they outlaw journalism, I'll be without a profession and without a lot of meaning. For me, in every moment, in every interaction I have, I want to know what's going on," she told ABC Backstory in a broad-ranging interview in 2019.
It's a drive that's taken her to some dark places – exposing the shocking cruelty that forced the suspension of live cattle exports to Indonesia in 2011 (Four Corners: A Bloody Business), harrowing interviews with the families of Katrina Dawson and Tori Johnson as part of a forensic investigation into the Sydney siege (Four Corners: The Siege part one and part two), living in a women's refuge while filming a confronting documentary on domestic violence, Hitting Home and interviewing paedophile priests for the three-part series Revelation.
"This kind of work leaves deep lines in your soul," she said after making Revelation.
Ferguson has won multiple awards: five Walkleys, including the Gold Walkley for A Bloody Business, the Melbourne Press Club Gold Quill, five Logies, two Australian Academy of Cinema and Television Arts Awards (AACTA's) for best documentary, the George Munster Award for Independent Journalism, the Asian Academy of Creative Arts award for documentary and the Queensland Premier's Literary Award. She has written two books, The Killing Season Uncut and a short book for Melbourne University press, On Mother.
Shining a light in the shadows inevitably upsets people, often powerful people. And social media has unleashed a new level of nastiness towards journalists — "unhinged, sexist bullying" is how Leigh Sales recently described the trolling she's been subjected to. But Ferguson refuses to be cowed.
"The blowback is bad and getting worse — it's big-league, it's hard and it's not for the faint-hearted. After the cattle story, some people wanted to, quote unquote, 'wrap me in chains and drop me in the bottom of the harbour'. You just have to hold the line and need really good management that will support you, which has always been the case for me at the ABC."
Interrogating politicians from an early age
Ferguson was born in Nigeria in 1965 to adventurous parents, Iain and Marjorie Ferguson, who nurtured in her a quest for an interesting life.
"My parents had travelled a lot, so it was never questioned that you might choose to go to unusual places and do unusual things. It was normal to want to go and explore the world," she says.
When she was a toddler, the family moved back to rural England and a small village in Essex.
Ferguson's curiosity emerged early.
As a teenager, she loved poetry and wrote a letter to her favourite poet, Philip Larkin, to ask him why his poems were so miserable, which led to a correspondence between them.
Her parents expected their children to know what was going on in the world and she grew up listening to BBC current affairs and surrounded by political debate.
Marjorie Ferguson was a local Tory party volunteer and one day, 13-year-old Sarah overheard a visiting political insider reveal that the local MP, a major player in the party, wanted to move to a safer seat.
When the MP turned up at Ferguson's school the next day, with local media in tow, the future journalist threw him a curly question.
"He thought he was having an easy afternoon patting us all on the head, but I put my hand up and asked are you committed to remaining in this constituency?"
"I knew he was looking for another one because I'd been eavesdropping, but I wasn't supposed to know that nor to ask about it and, of course, that became the story of the day."
Ferguson studied English literature at university and started in journalism as an arts reviewer before moving into making documentaries — "I love the medium of television, I love what it can do," she says.
Freelancing in Paris in 1992, she was hired by the ABC to work as a fixer on a story with Tony Jones, former Q&A host, who was then a foreign correspondent.
They later married and moved back to Australia, where Ferguson worked for SBS programs Dateline and Insight as a producer and reporter, spent four years on Nine Network's Sunday program and then joined Four Corners.
While Ferguson and Jones worked together on Revelation and Ferguson's recent assignment covering the war in Ukraine for Four Corners, they've largely kept their personal and professional lives separate.
"I have always had the view for a woman, in particular, that it's very important that your career is considered in its own light," says Ferguson.
Talk to your mother
While Sarah Ferguson has kept the lid firmly shut on her private life, in 2018 she wrote a deeply personal and moving book, On Mother, about love and grief following her mother's unexpected death.
She told of the shock and anguish from the moment her brother, Anthony, rang her with the news as she travelled in a Sydney taxi, her investigation into the hospital's treatment of her mother, and concluded with a plea to readers to "call their mother" before it's too late.
"I don't know how to say it, so I'll just say it. Mother died."
The bonds broke, snapping and uncoiling, like a thousand tiny ropes. I cried out. Tony tried to hold me, but I couldn't be held. Decades of restraint unravelled.
On a broken line, Anthony tried to explain. "She was alone in hospital. We didn't know she was there."
Not by herself. Not alone. No. I thrashed about in the back of the taxi, like something animal.
(Extract from On Mother.)
"It was publisher Louise Adler's idea and I said, 'but it's such an ordinary story.'
"She pressed me to do it and I accepted that uncomplicated love and sadness have their place and to express that was a valid thing to do.
"I'm glad I did it because I have this precious memory written down and doing the publicity, talking about it in places was fantastic because it's such a rich event for everyone when it happens so you know you are touching people.
"And suddenly there I was in a community of people who understand this extreme thing in all its manifestations. That was just so special from start to finish and not something I would normally do."
While she's spent much of her professional life wading through murky waters, off-camera Ferguson is warm, funny and engaging.
Her quick wit was on show in 2018 during an entertaining Hard Chat interview with comedian Tom Gleeson, which came about by accident.
"I agreed to do it because I thought it was something else. I didn't read the producer's email properly until the day before recording and then I realised what it was, and it was too late to pull out.
"I was sitting in the office and I put my head up and said to the team "Oh my God, what have I done?"
"I had just finished the Four Corners story about the ABC, [investigating the relationship breakdown between sacked managing director Michelle Guthrie and chairman Justin Milne], which was very sensitive, and we had to walk a very straight line between two competing stories.
"The defamation police had their sirens on, so I was worried about doing that interview at that time, but I did enjoy it.
"I love anything that makes me and other people laugh and I love having tables turned on me."
Over the next couple of months, Sarah Ferguson is packing up and heading home from Washington.
She'll be in the 7.30 host's chair from July 4.
With a new government, worrying economic headwinds, international power plays and the ongoing repercussions of the pandemic and natural disasters, there are plenty of questions her curious mind wants answered.
