Chris Mitchell (journalist)

Chris Mitchell is an Australian journalist. He was the editor-in-chief of The Australian from 2002 to 2015.

In 1973 Mitchell began his career as a cadet on the former afternoon Brisbane tabloid, The Telegraph. After working on The Townsville Bulletin, The Daily Telegraph and the Australian Financial Review, he joined The Australian in 1984.

In 1992 aged 35, Mitchell was appointed editor of The Australian. In 1995 he became editor-in-chief of Queensland Newspapers. In 2002 he returned to The Australian as editor-in-chief. Mitchell retired as editor-in-chief of The Australian in December 2015.

As at his retirement in 2015, he had completed 42 years as a journalist with 24 of those years as an editor. Rupert Murdoch praised Mitchell's contributions as News Corporation's longest serving editor worldwide.

In 1996, the newspaper Mitchel edited at the time, The Courier-Mail, claimed that the prominent Australian historian, Manning Clark, had been awarded the Order of Lenin. This claim was later shown to be false.

In 2010, Mitchell claimed that he had been defamed by academic Julie Posetti in a series of tweets she posted from a journalism conference claiming that reporter Asa Wahlquist had said Mitchell controlled election coverage of climate change issues. Posetti refused to apologise when tapes of the conference seemed to back her version of events.