Sharri Markson’s approach to Vikki Campion on camera
Look here at this picture. Isn’t that Sharri Markson, outside Vikki Campion’s apartment? Why, yes it is.
Look at this picture below. Isn’t that Sharri Markson?
Why, yes it is.
What’s she doing?
It looks for all the world like she’s pressing a security intercom, outside somebody’s apartment.
And doesn’t it also look like that photograph was taken by somebody inside the apartment? I mean, look closely: isn’t it a photograph of the little screen that lights up inside your place when there’s somebody at the door?
Well, that’s because that’s exactly what it is.
That is Markson, and she’s standing in the foyer of the apartment block, being photographed by somebody inside. And the button she’s pushing is connected to an apartment once occupied by Vikki Campion, the one-time mistress, now-partner of the one-time deputy prime minister, now former deputy PM Barnaby Joyce.
Markson, who can be seen wearing her Parliament House media pass on a lanyard, is pressing Campion’s button because she’s trying to get some answers to some rather pressing questions. She already knows that Campion is having Barnaby’s baby — when this picture was taken, in February, pretty much everyone in Canberra knew that, although nobody is chasing it, or at least getting it, quite like The Daily Telegraph’s pocket rocket — but she also wanted to ask a few questions about the taxpayer-funded jobs Campion landed after Campion left Barnaby’s office.
Barnaby and Campion — Barnabikki is, I guess, the best of the portmanteaux — were apparently very annoyed by Markson’s advances, turning down offers of a straight interview, and somebody wasn’t pleased to see Sharri on the doorstep, and Campion is known to have shared this photograph with friends, who shared it with friends, before it ultimately made its way to Diary.
And here’s why it’s interesting: a few months back, Campion complained to the Australian Press Council about Markson’s Bundle of Joyce scoop, and one of the specifics in her complaint was that The Daily Telegraph didn’t approach her for comment, which was kind of weird, because besides fronting up the way any good journo would, Markson also put all her questions in writing and sent them by email.
Markson was preparing to present all this evidence — the emails, and this photograph taken by somebody inside Vikki’s apartment, and sent around the place — to the Press Council when Campion abruptly withdrew her complaint on Friday, just as this photograph made its way to The Australian.
Campion told 9Finance: “I filed a Breach of Privacy complaint when heavily pregnant in an attempt to prevent my baby being hounded by media after his birth however he was papped at three weeks of age and drones used over our house … To stop being chased, we agreed to an interview. I have since approached the Press Council to close the complaint as I just want to focus on motherhood.”
Campion, Joyce and their six-week-old son were paid $150,000 for the interview. According to OzTam preliminary figures, just 631,000 sore and sorry metro viewers (that is, people watching from Melbourne, Brisbane, Sydney, Adelaide and Perth) tuned in, which is a rolled gold disaster for Seven.
Questions on the record
If the public by and large didn’t watch the Barnababy, journos sure did — it was trending on Twitter, which is where they all hang out. And why not, since journos are not the kind of people you’d have in your house — and they had some complaints, the chief one being: reporter Alex Cullen did not ask the public interest questions.
It was all about the sex. When, where, who knew, and eww.
This was problematic, because the public interest questions — those about Campion’s job, and the rent-free apartment the couple were given after their affair exploded into the open — is the fig leaf behind which everyone is hiding. It wouldn’t be impossible, but it would be much more difficult to report this yarn without those questions. So Cullen was getting it in the neck, but he’s since released footage showing he did ask those questions, he just didn’t put them to air in the original interview.
Why not?
Didn’t add anything to the show, apparently.
The footage also showed Cullen asking about parliamentary investigations into Campion’s travel entitlements.
She says: “They have found they actually owe me money.”
And as to allegations of sexual harassment, Joyce says it’s “garbage”.
Not too shabby. Pity we didn’t get to see it the first night. Seven broadcast the responses to those questions as a follow-up news story on their 6pm news the Monday after the interview went to air.
Trouble brews for Latte
Perhaps you saw the contretemps over the current issue of Meanjin, where the title — an indigenous word — got crossed out and replaced with the #metoo hashtag prompting much gnashing and wailing, mainly from the people who did it.
Editor Jonathan Green was first to apologise when indigenous Australians complained that they had been obliterated by a largely white feminist movement.
It wasn’t the only magazine to run into a little trouble, vis a vis the cover.
On the cover of the latest issue of Latte, the magazine published by women’s mentoring group Business Chicks, there are seven women, which is normally a good thing, but no.
On Twitter, the writer known as @MerikiK of the Kulin Nation, whose banner says “Western culture is not a benchmark of progress … is that clear?”, complained bitterly, as did Amy McQuire — who was also one of the first to complain about Meanjin — who posted the cover under the hashtag #vanillalatte.
Then came @Julia_Why, who said: “This magazine cover is embarrassing & dangerous & an insult to POC (people of colour) everywhere. Please do better in future #whitewash.”
But come on.
There are no indigenous women, true. But they’re not all white. Mahalia Barnes is in there. They’re not all able-bodied, either: Angel Dixon, a model who had a stroke at 19 and taught herself to walk again, is in there, following on the success on her “Me, my cane, and a Target” campaign.
Then you’ve got Ann Sherry, representing the often-invisible women over 60. Also, all are members of Tracey Spicer’s new not-for-profit NOW Australia, formed to help combat sexual harassment in the workplace, whose 60-strong steering committee includes dozens of women of colour, including indigenous women Deborah Mailman, as well as Faustina Agolley — with a Ghanaian father and Chinese Malaysian mother, Philomena — who is not white, and not straight, either.
The NOW is as diverse a group as you’re likely to get.
Then you’ve got Business Chicks itself, an organisation founded by Emma Isaacs, who bought the business at age 26. It’s now on two continents and 11 cities. She mainly employs women, and she’s a warrior for them. She tours “inspiring women” — Julia Gillard and Arianna Huffington — but also, two years ago, she toured Rosie Batty, a woman who has done more than maybe anyone to spread the vital message: domestic violence can happen to anyone. It could well be happening under your nose.
These people aren’t evil. They’re doing good works, in a tough environment. Also, in Diary’s view, sisters oughta stick together.
Sales rocks the Enmore
By day — OK, by early evening — she’s the whip-smart anchor of the ABC’s 7.30, staring down the PM and even Clive Palmer, but what was Leigh Sales and her sidekick Annabel Crabb doing late last Friday?
They were taking their live show, Chat 10 Looks 3 LIVE, to Sydney’s legendary Enmore Theatre, where — and Diary has this on reasonably good authority — Sales just couldn’t help herself. She rocked out on the guitar. Rocked out the Enmore! Truly a dream come true. And the audience loved it, queuing up later to load themselves up with Leigh Zeppelin and Black Crabbath Ts (no, not T-shirts, that’s T for tea towels, because it’s that kind of audience: laughter and cooking.)
If that weren’t enough, word on the street is that Sales has an extraordinary book on the way: Any Ordinary Day looks at what happened to people after the worst possible thing — the death of their children, for example — came and rocked their worlds off the axis. There’s some personal words from Sales, who nearly lost her own life during childbirth, but in the main, it’s a piece of reporting: beautiful writing on a serious topic with a mature and clear-eyed majesty. Watch her. She’s Garneresque.
Kitty’s stitch-up reply
As if Sunday Night executive producer Hamish Thomson didn’t have enough to worry about, what with the limp Barnababy showing. He’s also dealing with A Current Affair’s hijacking of his “Kitty Sullivan” exclusive. About a month ago, Susan Hannaford, the Los Angeles-based Aussie actress who played Kitty Sullivan in the long-running 1980s Nine soapie The Sullivans, was the much-hyped subject of an entire hour of Sunday Night programming, reported by Matt Doran.
For a fee that was reportedly north of $100k, Sunday Night’s cameras gained access to Hannaford’s Hollywood Hills home and the bizarre life she leads there. Central to the story was the assertion that she was heavily in debt — and that the cooks, cleaners and houseboys featured in the report were all employed by Hannaford for the express purpose of making her appear more successful than she really was.
It was a set-up — and made for an hour of excellent, can’t-look-away TV. And it rated really strongly for them.
A Current Affair dispatched reporter Brady Halls to Beverly Hills to give Hannaford a post-stitch-up right of reply. Which she willingly took. Without taking a fee.
Kylar moves on
Some movements in Canberra. The Daily Telegraph’s K ylar Loussikian has quit, to join Fairfax. He’ll be replaced by Sheradyn Holderhead, formerly political editor for Adelaide’s Advertiser.
An early squiz
The boys from the Betoota look like they do it all themselves, but there are magic hands behind their new Betoota Advocate podcast: the Diamantina Podcast Network, which has now picked up Claire Kimball’s The Squiz. Kimball, formerly corp comms at Woolies, says The Squiz Today, produced with former Sky News producer Kate Watson, will be six minutes long, and out by 6am every day, earlier than Diary gets out of bed, but absolutely ideal for overworked, underpaid political staffers, of which she once was one, having laboured for Tony Abbott, who has of course done a lap of the neighbourhood by that hour, in a G-string. Sorry, in budgies.
New Leys of life
Maybe you missed the news that Nick Leys has quit the ABC — and who can blame him? — for the Energy Council. He’s one of those guys, you’d just follow him wherever he goes, so here’s his Twitter handle, which will remain @leysie. Leys joined the ABC in 2014 as a media manager in Corporate Affairs after two decades in newspapers. He has worked with two ABC managing directors, initially under Mark Scott, reporting to director of communications Mick Millett, and most recently, Michelle Guthrie. Leys’ departure was announced by the ABC’s chief financial and strategy officer Louise Higgins in an email obtained by The Australian. “I’m writing to you with some disappointing news for the ABC but also with a fabulous announcement for Nick Leys,” Higgins wrote.
“Whilst this is a massive loss for the ABC, this is a brilliant and obvious next career step for Nick. Nick has worked tirelessly for this corporation and he really does embody what the ABC values are and stand for.”
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