Michael Usher is a highly experienced television reporter who brings a wealth of experience most notably as a foreign correspondent to his job at 60 Minutes.
Throughout his career, Michael has covered many of the biggest stories of our time - from the death of Princess Diana in August, 1997, to the 9/11 terrorist attacks. Those attacks in September, 2001, were a defining experience as a journalist for Michael.
As the Nine Network’s New York correspondent, he reported live to Australia as the tragedy unfolded.
Less than two years later, he was in Iraq, travelling north from Kuwait to reach Baghdad the day after Coalition forces seized the city. It was, he says: “a frightening, yet phenomenal, two-month mission.”
Michael grew up in Perth and, after graduating from high school, studied media at the W.A Academy of Performing Arts. He began his television news career in 1990 at the Golden West Television Network, Bunbury, as a final-year cadet journalist. He was then posted to Kalgoorlie before joining STW-9 Perth the following year.
In 1993, Michael moved to Sydney and to TCN-9 news. Three years later, he became the Nine Network's Olympics reporter, eventually leading coverage of the 2000 Sydney Olympic Games.
That role took him to Lausanne to cover the corruption scandal that engulfed the International Olympic Committee and, in 1996, he was in Atlanta covering the Olympics when the bomb went off in Centennial Park.
Michael's covered 4 Olympic Games, two Commonwealth Games and two World Swimming Championships.
In 2001, Michael moved to the Nine Network’s US bureau where he worked for three years. Based in Los Angeles, he covered stories from the Oscars to the Columbia Space Shuttle disaster.
Then, at the beginning of 2004, he was posted to Nine’s London bureau.
As the network’s European correspondent, Michael covered the Madrid train bombings, the Athens Olympics, Yasser Araft's death and the horrific Beslan school massacre. In 2005, he reported from Rome on the death of Pope John Paul II and was also involved in the network’s live coverage of the Papal funeral.
In 2006 Michael returned to Australia and presented Nightline until mid 2008, when he was Nine’s Olympics correspondent at the Beijing Games, then weekend presenter for Nine News in Sydney. He also filed several stories for 60 Minutes as a guest reporter, including a confronting story on Mexico’s drug wars and a profile of British actress Keira Knightley.
Michael became a permanent 60 Minutes reporter in March, 2009.
