{"id":1738,"date":"2013-02-23T11:50:35","date_gmt":"2013-02-23T00:50:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/australiansforhonestpolitics.wordpress.com\/?p=1738"},"modified":"2019-04-13T23:24:22","modified_gmt":"2019-04-13T13:24:22","slug":"margo-kingston-building-bridges","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/margo-kingston-building-bridges\/","title":{"rendered":"Building Bridges"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Margo

Margo Kingston<\/p><\/div>\n

By Michael Taylor (TheAIMN<\/a>)
\n<\/a>February 24, 2013<\/p>\n

There is an old movie line I often recall:\u00a0A life filled with activity suggests a life filled with purpose<\/em>.<\/p>\n

I have no hesitation in borrowing that line in applying it is an apt portrayal of well-known Australian author and journalist; Margo Kingston. I\u2019ve been a big fan of Margo\u2019s since her book\u00a0Not happy, John<\/a>\u00a0hit the shelves in 2004, so I was chuffed to be granted an interview with her last week. I was to discover just how active and purposeful her life has been, and still is, and that there is far more to Margo than the book which first introduced her to me.<\/p>\n

But first, a little background.<\/p>\n

Margo, a Queenslander, graduated from university with a degree in arts and law and practised as a solicitor in Brisbane before lecturing in commercial law in Rockhampton. The move to journalism saw her working for\u00a0The Courier-Mail\u00a0<\/i>and within a year moved to\u00a0The<\/i>\u00a0Times\u00a0on Sunday<\/i>. She had since worked for\u00a0The Age<\/i>,\u00a0The Canberra Times<\/i>\u00a0and\u00a0A Current Affair<\/i>\u00a0before moving to\u00a0The Sydney Morning Herald<\/i>, where she worked until her retirement in August 2005. Her first book was\u00a0Off The Rails: The Pauline Hanson Trip<\/i>\u00a0which recounted her experiences (as a journalist) on the One Nation Party\u2019s election campaign in the 1990s. She is also known for her now defunct blog,\u00a0Webdiary<\/a>.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\u201cWriting the book about the One Nation Party experience was a testing time for me and I vowed never to write another book again. I didn\u2019t consider myself an author or a person willing to be one. A journalist, yes. An author, no\u201d recalled Margo. At this point I was wondering why she later decided to write\u00a0Not happy, John<\/em>, however, a slight hesitation on my behalf gave her the opportunity to proceed with an explanation. \u201cWhile I was working for the Sydney Morning Herald I was invited by Phillip Adams (from Radio National\u2019s\u00a0Late Night Live<\/em>) to be on the discussion panel of the\u00a0Adelaide Festival of Ideas<\/em>. It was there that Phillip tapped me on the shoulder and said I needed to write a book about John Howard. Of course, the answer was an insistent \u2018no\u2019 but the response was \u201cit\u2019s your duty\u201d and one thing led to another and before I knew it I found myself writing\u00a0Not happy, John<\/em>\u201c.<\/p>\n

\"Not<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t long before the book put her on the outer with her employer.<\/p>\n

\u201cAfter a long-term Government everyone in the media seems quite happy with how the country is governed and so after many years of Howard the Sydney Morning Herald had drifted slowly to the right. The publication of the book was frowned upon and my run-ins with the SMH editor are now famous\u201d.<\/p>\n

I could sense that Margo is more excited about her post-SMH life, even though when she began her new incarnation she did so as an emotionally shattered soul.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom the time\u00a0Not happy, John<\/em>\u00a0hit the shelves I was battered from pillar to post at the SMH. They grilled me relentlessly because of the damage this could cause to Howard. I put up with this shit for a few months before I limped away in search of a new Margo Kingston. The old Margo Kingston was driven from the head and now felt broken. Everything was draining the life out of me, even running Webdiary. I\u2019d had enough. The new Margo was going to be driven from the heart and that\u2019s how my life flowed over the next seven years. My new love was my family, my garden, and especially my friends. The latter being the most important. I\u2019m a disaster at love and I chose to lead a celibate life \u2013 and you can print that \u2013 as I don\u2019t want relationships to interfere with the love between friends. I want friends, not lovers. I also wanted some recovery time\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"DSC_0739\"

Margo, her mum and her sister Gay.<\/p><\/div>\n

In this period of \u2018recluse\u2019 Margo began a degree in nursing. It was difficult for me to understand how one of Australia\u2019s best-known journalists would consider such a move, as admirable as it was. \u201cIt was the new Margo\u201d she reminded me. \u201cThe new Margo that was going to be driven by the heart. I just knew it was the right thing to do\u201d.<\/p>\n

Then, after taking an interest in social media recently and recognising what a wonderful and powerful tool it is, the passion for media slowly returned. But it was more than that; it was also the realisation that the old media was leading this country down a dangerous path.<\/p>\n

\u201cJournalists used to be a bridge between the people and the powerful. Journalists used to be outside the circle but now they\u2019re inside the circle. They\u2019ve joined the powerful and this very dangerous for a democracy\u201d.<\/p>\n

Now she was firing up.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s scary that the media are not doing their job. Many journalist friends have expressed the same concerns; they don\u2019t feel as though they are traditional journalists anymore, they are simply writing what the powerful want them to write. The real turning point for me came after Mark Scott\u2019s treatment of John Faine<\/a> recently. That was fucking pathetic. Faine was doing his job and Scott publicly chastised him. The ABC under Scott has lost it\u2019s way. I repeat, it\u2019s pathetic. I\u2019m not going to let that episode go away. It\u2019s the social media users, such as Twitter users and bloggers that will do something about it. We need to keep pushing it\u201d.<\/p>\n

The firing continued. \u201cFairfax, the ABC and even Crikey are too fucking timid to do anything to upset the powerful. It\u2019s up to social media. And there are journalists in the traditional media who secretly admit that the new, independent media is the way of the future and we must join with them. We need to build a bridge between the new media and journalists who see the corruption within the mainstream media. We need to collaborate and work together. We can do this by luring traditional journalists into the new media and free them of their shackles. If we do this, one day we in the new media will look back and be grateful for the decisions we make today\u201d.<\/p>\n

And how does all this feel? \u201cIt\u2019s just like the good old days of Webdiary. Social media provides a forum for all Australians and I\u2019m loving it. Without Twitter and my own newly established site\u00a0Australians For Honest Politics<\/a>\u00a0I couldn\u2019t have got the fight back. I see hope now. But first we need to build those bridges\u201d.<\/p>\n

\"AFHFHPFH<\/a><\/p>\n

Who better to lay the first plank than Margo Kingston?<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Read more about the Jon Faine Affair<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Michael Taylor (TheAIMN) February 24, 2013 There is an old movie line I often recall:\u00a0A life filled with activity suggests a life filled with purpose. I have no hesitation in borrowing that line in applying it is an apt portrayal of well-known Australian author and journalist; Margo Kingston. I\u2019ve been a big fan of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[3434,3,65,26,32],"tags":[2550,2561,2565,2566,348,458],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3t0mw-s2","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1738"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1738"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1738\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1738"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1738"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1738"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}