25 Facts About Steve Cannane

Steve Cannane is the chief of the ABC's Europe bureau, based in London.

Steve Cannane had previously been the ABC's Europe correspondent, a reporter for the ABC's Investigations unit, a host of The Drum and a reporter at Lateline.

At the age of 22, Steve Cannane was persuaded to run as the Australian Labor Party candidate for Warringah in the 1993 Australian federal election.

In 2008 Steve Cannane said although running as a candidate in 1993 was fun at the time, he actually didn't hold any serious political aspirations and had long since moved on.

Steve Cannane subsequently started work as a reporter for radio station Triple J's current affairs program, The Morning Show.

In 2003, after Francis Leach left the station, Steve Cannane took on the position of host of the show.

Steve Cannane temporarily presented breakfast on ABC Radio National while the regular presenter pursued other projects.

Steve Cannane was the founding presenter of Triple J's current affairs program, Hack, beginning in 2004.

In 2005, Steve Cannane was accused of antisemitism by Liberal Party senator Santo Santoro who alleged at a senate committee hearing that Steve Cannane had made reference to "those awful jews" in a November 2004 Hack interview about Mordechai Vanunu.

However, Santoro later apologised and said that he had been misinformed after a review of the transcript confirmed Steve Cannane had put no such questions forward.

Steve Cannane was commended in the same category of the Walkleys in 2005.

In 2006 Steve Cannane won the Excellence in Alcohol and Drug Media Reporting Award at the National Drug and Alcohol Awards and visited the US as the Australian representative on the US Department of State's Edward R Murrow program for journalists.

In 2008, Steve Cannane presented The Hack Half Hour on ABC2.

In July 2010, Steve Cannane was appointed presenter of ABC News 24's The Drum, a panel discussion program providing news and analysis on issues of the day.

Also in July 2010, Steve Cannane broke the story of harassment of the parents of a child who died of whooping cough by the anti-vaccination lobby, the Australian Vaccination Network on Lateline.

Steve Cannane's story was the first to expose the lobby group as callous and cruel, with revelations that their President Meryl Dorey, had sought to access medical records of the child as evidence she had died from a pertussis infection.

Steve Cannane has continued to follow the AVN, most recently on The Drum, discussing the appearance of Dorey at the Woodford Folk Festival.

Steve Cannane has worked as a reporter and fill in presenter on ABC1's late night news and current affairs program, Lateline, presenter of The Drum on ABC News 24 and has appeared on Ten's The 7pm Project.

From April 2016 until July 2018, Steve Cannane was ABC's Europe Correspondent, based in London before joining the ABC's Investigations Unit as a reporter.

In May 2021, Steve Cannane was named as the new chief of the ABC's Europe bureau.

In September 2016, Steve Cannane published Fair Game: The Incredible Untold Story of Scientology in Australia, which prompted a defamation suit to be brought against Steve Cannane and HarperCollins by doctors John Gill and John Herron who were involved in the Australian Chelmsford deep sleep scandal.

In 2018, HarperCollins unsuccessfully applied to have the case thrown out due to the unreasonable expectation of Steve Cannane being required to prove the findings of the royal commission.

The judgement stated that Steve Cannane had established a defence of qualified privilege.

Steve Cannane was of the belief that he would not be able to obtain an accurate account of events from Mr John Herron and or Dr John Gill, however all three justices agreed that this didn't make it reasonable upon Steve Cannane's and HarperCollins' behalf to completely disregard their account of what occurred.

The Federal Court stated that Mr Steve Cannane had made a deliberate choice not to obtain and include an account told from Dr Gill and Mr Herron's view.