I've been deputy editor-in-chief of ORF‘s TV news department since 2010 and, since 2002, anchor of its flagship news magazine ZiB 2 (28 % market share, more than 600.000 daily viewers). In 2019 I was named "European Journalist of the Year".

Born in Innsbruck in 1966, I began my career at ORF‘s local studio in Tyrol as a radio reporter after graduating from an economic high school in Innsbruck. From 1988 to 1994 I was a foreign affairs reporter at ORF Radio based in Vienna, mostly covering 1989 and its aftermath in Eastern Europe. In 1991/92 I was assigned to ORF‘s Washington bureau covering Bill Clinton‘s election campaign. In 1995 I went from radio to ORF‘s TV news department, first as a national affairs reporter and from 1998-2001 as managing editor of the newly developed midnight news show ZiB 3, before I returned to ZiB 2 as its anchor.

I hold a doctorate in political science from the University of Innsbruck, a master‘s degree from the University of Vienna and an MBA from Steinbeis-Hochschule Berlin.

Over the last three decades I have interviewed four Austrian Federal Presidents, seven Chancellors and seven Foreign Ministers, as well as numerous foreign leaders such as Michail Gorbatschow, Lech Walesa, Vaclav Havel, Henry Kissinger, Al Gore, Saddam Hussein, Yassir Arafat, Shimon Peres, Benjamin Netanyahu, Tabo Mbeki, Jean-Claude Juncker or, most recently, Vladimir Putin.