At the height of his career, he was reportedly Australia\u2019s highest-paid media personality, bringing in A$1 million a year.<\/p>\n
His life\u2019s work was marked by both accolades and controversy. In 1987, he was jailed for 12 days for identifying a convicted paedophile.<\/p>\n
The issue of child sex abuse was one of his defining causes, later serving another 50 days in 2014 for naming another sex offender in violation of a suppression order.<\/p>\n
In 2016, he entered politics, becoming Australia\u2019s oldest first-time senator when he was elected aged 72 after founding his own party.<\/p>\n
Speaking to 3AW, journalist and former colleague Peter Ford paid tribute to Hinch\u2019s extraordinary career.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s an amazing story of somebody who, as a young guy in rural New Zealand, had dreams of getting into journalism and slowly but surely, boy, did he do that.<\/p>\n
\u201cApart from having a really good journalist\u2019s mind for a story, he knew how to write a story, how to present a story … he knew a good yarn when he heard it.<\/p>\n
\u201cNow that wasn\u2019t to say, of course, that he wasn\u2019t provocative; he stirred the pot a lot, he upset people a lot, and he saw that almost as being validation of doing his job well.\u201d<\/p>\n
Media personality Ray Martin had described Hinch as a \u201clegend of Australian journalism\u201d during his 2018 induction to the Australian Media Hall of Fame.<\/p>\n
\u201cSenator Derryn Hinch has been a colourful, megaphone-campaigning, ground-breaking journalist. He has always pursued the story as ambitiously and doggedly as the headline. <\/p>\n
\u201cHe has long been amongst the very best tabloid reporters in Australia, a special skill that should be recognised and rewarded. He has also consistently been on the \u2018decent\u2019 side of most public debates.\u201d<\/p>\n
Hinch\u2019s death followed several years of declining health. According to Nine News, he battled liver cancer and cirrhosis before undergoing a liver transplant in 2011. <\/p>\n
Last year, he was admitted to hospital for a leg infection and revealed a string of falls had left him increasingly frail.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At the height of his career, he was reportedly Australia\u2019s highest-paid media personality, bringing in A$1 million a…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":518959,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[115028,18919,1975,9516,10039,690,60972,6179,156,2740,60973,5844,117,111,139,69,257465,21643],"class_list":["post-518958","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-entertainment","tag-115028","tag-aged","tag-at","tag-broadcaster","tag-controversial","tag-dead","tag-derryn","tag-died","tag-entertainment","tag-former","tag-hinch","tag-journalist","tag-new","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-plymouthborn","tag-politician"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518958","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=518958"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/518958\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/518959"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=518958"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=518958"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=518958"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}