His Order of Australia Medal, awarded in June 2009, recognised his "contributions to radio broadcasting as an educator, media trainer and author".
[3] He had started his career in radio in the late 1970s and by 1987 was acting station manager at Australian Broadcasting Corporation's (ABC's) Canberra-based 2CN and 2CY.
[12] Ahern was awarded an Order of Australia medal in 2009 "for his contributions to radio broadcasting as an educator, media trainer and author".
In 2018, Ahern developed a successful business news-talk station called Money FM for commercial radio and publishing company SPH Singapore.
[28][29] He provided an entry on the first Director of AFTRS, Jerzy Toeplitz (1909–1995), for the Australian Dictionary of Biography [30] and contributed two chapters to a book about South African media.
In Paris in July 2022, he spoke at a UNESCO presentation on the importance of Media and Information Literacy (MIL) and professional journalism.
Steve Ahern is married to Serena (née Poggi),[18][41] a teacher-librarian at Saint Ignatius' College, Riverview,[42] and they have two children.