{"id":1911,"date":"2013-03-01T23:12:00","date_gmt":"2013-03-01T12:12:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/australiansforhonestpolitics.wordpress.com\/?p=1911"},"modified":"2019-04-13T23:24:21","modified_gmt":"2019-04-13T13:24:21","slug":"manifesto-for-nofibs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/manifesto-for-nofibs\/","title":{"rendered":"Manifesto for @NoFibs"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Margo

Margo Kingston – Photo credit Sarah Gross Fife<\/p><\/div>\n

By Margo Kingston<\/a>
\nMarch 1, 2013<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a funny feeling to be writing an introduction to the ebook<\/a> of Still Not Happy, John!\u2019<\/a>, because after so many years in retirement I\u2019m now back doing what I love \u2013 writing for and editing a citizen journalism website.<\/p>\n

Back then it was with the\u00a0Sydney Morning Herald<\/i>\u2019s Webdiary, created in 2000 and the inspiration for my 2004 book,\u00a0Not Happy, John!<\/i>. The book saw Fairfax\u00a0turn its back on my work<\/a>, and after a gruelling struggle to save Webdiary, I\u00a0retired hurt<\/a>\u00a0in December 2005. A community-supported Webdiary\u00a0finally closed<\/a>\u00a0last July.<\/p>\n

Its successor, thanks to Twitter, is\u00a0Australians for Honest Politics<\/a>, created in December 2012 by former Webdiarist Tony Yegles,\u00a0my AFHP co-publisher<\/a>.<\/p>\n

After seven years as an internet refugee, I\u2019m now a Twitter obsessive, and surprised I\u2019m still up for it. For me it\u2019s ground hog day, but with the bells and whistles of technology making the process easier and more fun. And I\u2019ve been given an armchair ride on Twitter due to the support of many former Webdiarists who\u2019ve since become internet writers and activists.<\/p>\n

What brought me back was a compulsion borne of amazement that the media had let Tony Abbott get away with claiming the AWU slush fund saga was a question of character for the PM (\u2018Australians for Honest Politics\u2019 is the name Tony Abbott gave his own slush fund, detailed at length in the book).<\/p>\n

My first piece back in action \u2013 which only\u00a0Independent Australia<\/a><\/i>\u00a0would publish \u2013 was about\u00a0Tony Abbott and his slushy character question<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Only\u00a0Michelle Grattan<\/a>, now a fellow escapee to online new media heaven, had the class\u00a0to acknowledge<\/a>\u00a0a collective lapse in memory in the Press Gallery. No one took up my challenge to push Abbott on his unanswered slush questions, despite their ferocious pursuit of Julia Gillard on hers.<\/p>\n

Having put history as completely back on the record as I could thanks to\u00a0The King\u2019s Tribune<\/i><\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0New Matilda<\/i><\/a>, I was set to resume my new life until I noted with alarm the extraordinary lack of mainstream media interest in the implications of the Ashby judgement. I\u00a0wrote of the resonance<\/a>\u00a0between the old Abbott slush story and the Ashby scandal, then\u00a0howled with dismay<\/a>\u00a0at the lack of Ashby follow-up.<\/p>\n

Now, damn it, I\u2019m hooked on journalism again.<\/p>\n

Several tweeps asked for an ebook of\u00a0Still Not Happy, John!<\/i>, and Penguin has kindly obliged. I feel it\u2019s worth a read, or a re-read. Here\u2019s why.<\/p>\n

It embodies\u00a0Webdiary\u2019s vision<\/a>\u00a0of collaboration between journalist and reader, which I feel is the only way journalism can survive. Two lay Webdiarists, Jack Robertson and Harry Heidelberg (a\u00a0nom de plume<\/i>\u00a0for David Davis), wrote chapters. I also commissioned chapters from two working journalists, Antony Loewenstein and Paddy Manning. Paddy\u2019s chapter on the Howard Government\u2019s attempts to muzzle NGOs via the Institute of Public Affairs is relevant today, because the IPA is now ubiquitous in newspapers and on the ABC without any acknowledgement that it is secretly funded to represent certain big business interests.<\/p>\n

The book documents, particularly in the chapters on Abbott\u2019s slush fund, the Iraq war (the first a government entered into without the support of the Australian people) and the extraordinary, largely unreported Howard-endorsed takeover of our Parliament by President Bush and President Hu, the efforts of citizen journalists to get the facts and tell the story the mainstream media did not tell.<\/p>\n

\"Iraq

Iraq War Demonstration Sydney<\/p><\/div>\n

This documentation of citizen journalism provides an historical context to what will be, in 2013, the first federal election significantly shaped by social media.<\/p>\n

When I covered Pauline Hanson\u2019s election campaign in 1998, documented in\u00a0Off the Rails: The Pauline Hanson Trip<\/i>, I experienced the shock of One Nation geek Scott Balson recording the media and posting comments about us. This election, citizen journalists will be active in reporting the news and reporting the media getting the news. It has already begun, and\u00a0it ain\u2019t pretty<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Two chapters describe Fairfax values (which still live on in journalists, if not in the doomed shell that is Fairfax today), and how Fairfax journos fought to protect them against attempts by the Howard government to meet the demands of Kerry Packer and Rupert Murdoch. Both political parties have played with these devils, and I strongly believe that the Abbott-Murdoch partnership will, if it triumphs at the election, destroy what is left of the fourth estate\u2019s capacity to hold the powerful accountable to the people.<\/p>\n

It is also useful to look back on what is now seen, apparently, as the \u2018golden\u2019 Howard years, and to remember his government\u2019s record. And to notice that, compared to today\u2019s Liberal Party, John Howard\u2019s crew was benign. The moderates, seriously wounded under Howard, are now dead. The hard right has taken over, and\u00a0Cory Bernardi is its talisman<\/a>.<\/p>\n

People say to me:<\/p>\n

\u2018Why bother? Who cares?\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n

My reply:<\/p>\n

\u2018Well, all a journo can do is put out the information, and if people don\u2019t want to read it then at least they\u2019ve had the opportunity!\u2019<\/em><\/p>\n

Thanks to Penguin, here it is.<\/p>\n

Me, I feel relaxed and comfortable sitting outside the system looking in. In my day, I was the first highly paid mainstream \u2018blogger\u2019, regularly on radio and TV. The nasty right, exemplified by Tim Blair, were the volunteer outsiders. Now Tim is ensconced in News Ltd, Andrew Bolt is the most-read mainstream blogger, and I\u2019m the volunteer ignored by the MSM.<\/p>\n

Times change. I like where I am more than where I was. Because I\u2019m free.<\/p>\n

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

\u2018Still Not Happy, John!\u2019 is published by Penguin. You can download it\u00a0as an ebook by clicking here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Margo Kingston March 1, 2013 It\u2019s a funny feeling to be writing an introduction to the ebook of Still Not Happy, John!\u2019, because after so many years in retirement I\u2019m now back doing what I love \u2013 writing for and editing a citizen journalism website. Back then it was with the\u00a0Sydney Morning Herald\u2019s Webdiary, […]<\/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":[3434,3,65,21,26],"tags":[106,2591,259,2565,348,493],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3t0mw-uP","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1911"}],"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=1911"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1911\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1911"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1911"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1911"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}