Max Uechtritz

Max Uechtritz is an award-winning international broadcaster and executive with a career spanning 30 years, involving senior roles in public and commercial broadcasting , print and digital media.

He is currently Director of Programmes at Al Jazeera English (AJE) which is broadcast to 150 million people in 100 countries around the world. Launched in 2006, AJE is one of the "Big Three" global television networks alongside BBC World and CNN International.

Uechtritz is responsible for all documentaries, features and current affairs on the 24 hour channel, which in its short history has won various international awards for excellence. Previously he worked on five continents as an international correspondent, program maker and executive in charge of global newsgathering networks. He also was a member of several international media advisory boards including that of Africa's A24, the continent's first pan-African multi-media company.

Uechtritz has the unique distinction in the Australian media of running the largest news operations in the three main forms – public broadcasting, commercial television and online.

Uechtritz was the Executive Director of News and Current Affairs at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) from 2000-2004, then Network Director of News at Nine Network Australia (2004-2005).

He was Editor in Chief of the country’s biggest web publisher, Ninemsn, a joint venture between PBL Media and Microsoft USA from Nov 2006 to January 2009.

At the ABC, Uechtritz managed one of the larger and more diverse newsgathering operations in international broadcasting – all news and current affairs programs and staff across ABC television, radio and online and on the satellite television network ABC Asia Pacific. This included responsibility for 750 journalists in 58 domestic bureaus and 13 foreign bureaus with a budget of $126 million.

Uechtritz also sat on the three-person Board which ran the International Broadcasting Division, incorporating ABC Asia-Pacific television and Radio Australia.

Heading up National Nine News, Uechtritz oversaw the network’s news product and staff – for the flagship 6pm bulletins, Today show, 11am, 4:30pm, Nightline and Sunday.

Uechtritz branched into media consultancy in July 2005. Domestically he advised the television-magazines-online conglomerate PBL. He helped set the framework for A24 and remains in its advisory board. He was contracted in 2006 to Canada’s national broadcaster CBC, advising on restructuring and assimilating CBC’s international operations and developing a new nightly foreign affairs program.

Before his management career, Uechtritz was an ABC foreign correspondent, reporting from more than 30 countries on five continents, covering first hand some of recent history’s major events. These include the Tiananmen Square massacre, first Gulf War, Soviet coup attempt , Russian White House siege, Bosnian war and Croatian, Slovenian and Kosovo conflicts, German Reunification, Nelson Mandela’s election, Bill Clinton’s re-election, demise of Margaret Thatcher and the Barcelona and Atlanta Olympics.

Uechtritz is a two-time Walkley Award winner and four times a finalist in Australia’s most prestigious journalism prize. He has also won Television Penguin and Gold Thorn awards and the Bicentennial Pater Award for Investigative Reporting.

As a recipient of the Centenary Medal, awarded by the Governor General and Prime Minister to mark 100 years since Federation, Uechtritz was recognized for services to news and current affairs in Australia.

He was a member of the founding Advisory Board of the Brussels-based International News Safety Institute (INSI). Since 2003 he has sat on the Advisory Board for the CEW Bean Foundation, which promotes the work of Australian war historians and correspondents.

Uechtritz, 51, has been married to wife Helen for 25 years and has two children.