Charles Miranda is a senior correspondent for NewsCorp Australia and a non-fiction author.
Charles has collected some incredible stories over his career as - to put it in his words - a “death and mayhem correspondent” for NewsCorp Australia. He was one of the first people to stumble upon the cockpit wreckage of MH-17 in Eastern Ukraine in 2014 and the actions he took that day before Russian rebels rode in and carted away the evidence would play an important role at a war crimes investigation in The Hague and the breaking of international news stories. He spent a year tracking down a USB containing vital video evidence suggesting that the plane had been shot down by a surface to air missile fired by the Russian-backed rebels, killing all 298 passengers on board including 38 Australians.
Charles has been in the media for decades working predominantly for NewsCorp Australia including 10 years spent as a Europe and Middle East correspondent covering security, defence, foreign affairs and transnational crime. He is the author of a non-fiction book, Deception: The true story of the international drug plot that brought down Australia's top law enforcer Mark Standen, which we discuss in the episode.
Our conversation touches upon...
✈ Charles finding the MH-17 wreckage and breaking the revelations to the world via his news reports, plus his overage of the war 2014 and 2022
🔫 Charles’s experience growing up in Spain under the Francoist regime and his surprise upon arriving in Australia to find out his primary school peers didn’t know how to fire a handgun
🎸 Charles’s early career as a music writer for the Canberra Times following Dire Straits on tour
🏛 How Charles got his first gig covering federal politics by observing the weapons guards were carrying outside parliament house
🗺 His time in East Timor covering conflict there with US marines; why Charles thinks good foreign reporting has to involve boots on the ground rather than writing behind a screen
🛬 Charles’s career post-911 including the time he thought his end was imminent aboard a troop transport plane in Afghanistan
👮♂️ The time Charles nearly went to prison in Wandsworth in the UK for his reporting, and why he can’t talk much about it;
📰 His extraordinary exclusive on Australia’s most corrupt top cop Mark Standen
👤 And the time Charles was briefly held hostage by armed rebels in The Philippines.
For a full episode transcript and links to Charles’s work visit our website: http://bylinespodcast.com
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