Jana Wendt is Australian television's best-known fe­male current-affairs reporter and presenter. She is also widely regarded as one of Australian commercial television's most skilled interviewers.

     The daughter of Czech immigrants, Melbourne-born Wendt began her career in journalism researching documentaries for the government-funded Australian Broadcasting Commission in 1975. After completing an arts degree at Melbourne University, she accepted a job in commercial television. joining Ten Network as an on-camera news reporter in its Melbourne news­ room. Shortly after moving into the role of news presenter at Ten Network, Wendt was offered a position as a reporter on Nine Network's new prime-time current­ affairs show, 60 Minutes.

     Under the guidance of executive producer Gerald Stone. an American with broad experience in both Australian and U.S. news and current-affairs programming, 60 Minutes proceeded to set the standard for quality commercial current affairs in Australia both in terms of content and production values. The youngest correspondent to join the 60 Minutes team. Wendt quickly established a reputation for her aggressive interviewing style and glamorous, ice-cool on-camera demeanor. It was this combination of acuity and implacability that earned Wendt her nickname "the perfumed steamroller."

     In 1987 Wendt left 60 Minutes to anchor another Nine Network program, the nightly prime-time half­ hour current-affairs show, A Current Affair, where she cemented her journalistic reputation with a series of incisive and revealing interviews with national and international political figures. Her subjects included Libya's Colonel Gaddafi, U.S. vice president Dan Quayle, former U.S. secretary of state Henry Kissinger, former Philippines president Ferdinand Marcos, and media barons Rupert Murdoch and Conrad Black. In 1994 Wendt returned to 60 Minutes to fill the newly created role of anchor.

     Wendt's departure from A Current Affair the previous year followed accelerating criticism of the program for its increasingly tabloid accent. The trend, evidenced for critics by A Current Affair's frequent use of hidden cameras, walk-up interviews, and stories with a voyeuristic, sexual theme, was at odds with Wendt's image as a guarantor of dispassionate investigative reporting. While she declined to criticize the program on her departure, she did register her general professional objections to the "tabloidization" of Australian current affairs on her return to Nine Network in 1994. The first 60 Minutes she hosted was an hour­ long studio debate on journalistic ethics and the tabloidization of news and current affairs.

     A traditionalist who endorses the notions of journalistic objectivity and the watchdog role of the media in the public sphere, Wendt is an icon of an era many me­dia analysts  believe to be passing  in Australian  commercial current-affairs television. The approach of pay television, as well as the debt burdens many network owners inherited in the 1980s, caused Australian broadcast networks to look carefully at their production budgets and demand that news and current-affairs divisions show increasing profitability. The result has been an attempt to move the focus of such programs away from public sphere issues such as politics, economics, and science and concentrate on domestic matters such as relationships, consumer issues, sexuality, and family life. In many instances, this shift in focus has been accompanied by a more melodramatic, emotional approach on the part of journalists and hosts. It is a trend that Wendt has consistently resisted and that has led her to become a respected, but somewhat isolated figure in today's commercial current-affairs landscape.