He began his career as a cadet journalist with the Australian Broadcasting Commission in Sydney, then returned to the UK to work in the newsroom of BBC World Service. He has reported for the BBC from more than thirty countries, including reporting from the Rio Earth Summit, and won international awards for his work in 1987 and 2001.

In 1992 he took up the post of Project Director with the newly-formed BBC Marshall Plan of the Mind (now the World Service Trust, the largest specialised media development organisation in the world) involving preparing educational programming, and persuading national broadcasters in the ex-Soviet states to put this material out free on their networks. This resulted in many programme series on Russian and Ukrainian state radio and television, as well as many independent stations there and in other countries.

Tim also compiled training videos, set up international media festivals, advised governments on public service advertising and lectured on environmental journalism at universities in eleven countries. Fluent in French, with some German and Russian, he has been an independent consultant since 2001, working on a variety of projects from Macedonia to Malaysia for funders like the EU, DFID and the World Bank, international organisations like the International Atomic Energy Agency and international companies.