Everything about Creighton Burns totally explained
Creighton Lee Burns AO (
19 March 1925 –
19 January 2008) was an
Australian journalist and academic, who was editor-in-chief of
The Age newspaper in
Melbourne from 1981 to 1989.
Early life and naval career
Born in Melbourne, Burns attended
Scotch College, and at the age of 15 became a cadet journalist at
The Sun News-Pictorial.
In
1942, he joined the
Royal Australian Navy, where he served as a sailor on board the cruiser
HMAS Australia, the corvette
HMAS Warrnambool and the destroyer
HMAS Nepal.
Academia
After
World War II, Burns returned to Australia where he attended the
University of Melbourne on a government grant, and achieved first-class honours in history. In 1941, Burns was named the
Rhodes Scholar for
Victoria. Prior to attending
Oxford, Burns returned once again to journalism, briefly working for the news agency
AAP-
Reuters. At Oxford, Burns was granted scholarships to study at
Nuffield and
Balliol Colleges, where he gained first-class honours in philosophy, politics and economics, and a
Master of Arts.
Returning to Australia in 1952, Burns took up a teaching position as a lecturer at
Canberra University College. In 1953, he returned to the University of Melbourne as a senior lecturer and later
reader in
political science. In 1964,
The Age newspaper offered him a position as their
Southeast Asia foreign
correspondent.
The Age
For most of his tenure in Southeast Asia from 1964 to 1967, Burns was stationed in
Saigon and
Singapore, covering the
Vietnam War. He was one of the first journalists to be taken out on patrol with the
1st Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment. He returned to Melbourne in 1967, as diplomatic and defence correspondent for
The Age, later becoming the paper's assistant editor, then associate editor. In 1975, he was appointed U.S. correspondent at The Age's
Washington, D.C. bureau, where he worked until 1981. The transcripts revealed conversations between
High Court Judge Lionel Murphy and a magistrate, which lead to a
Royal Commission and the conviction of Justice Murphy on a charge of attempting to pervert the course of justice. The publication of the tapes also prompted the
New South Wales government to pass the Listening Devices Act 1984, which tightened up the provisions of the 1969 Act under which the illegal police buggings and tapings had taken place.
Burns retired from
The Age in 1989, but remained in public life as the
chancellor of the
Victoria University of Technology and president of the Melbourne
Savage Club. He was made an
Officer of the Order of Australia in the 1991
Australia Day honours, in recognition of service to the media and to international relations.
Death
Creighton Burns died at Cabrini Hospital in
Malvern on
19 January 2008, after a long battle with
cancer. He ws 82 years old. He was lauded by
Premier of Victoria John Brumby as an "outstanding editor", a sentiment echoed by Brumby's predecessors,
Jeff Kennett and
Joan Kirner.
Further Information
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