{"id":6096,"date":"2013-07-09T22:08:18","date_gmt":"2013-07-09T12:08:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nofibs.com.au\/?p=6096"},"modified":"2022-05-02T00:28:41","modified_gmt":"2022-05-01T14:28:41","slug":"media-rules-election-campaign-bus-1996","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.nofibs.com.au\/media-rules-election-campaign-bus-1996\/","title":{"rendered":"Media Rules: Election campaign bus 1996"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Tom Burton and Michelle Grattan on the Press Bus<\/p><\/div>\n

By\u00a0Margo Kingston<\/a><\/p>\n

9 July, 2013<\/p>\n

AS AUSTRALIA gears up for another federal election, I let my mind return to the 1996 election campaign bus.<\/p>\n

The caught-in-a-trap feeling returns, as does the strength of my determination when it was over to never, ever get on another election campaign media bus.<\/p>\n

Little wonder that the public has come to distrust us, the media, as much as the politicians<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

We had great big mobile phones then, and no laptops. As the Sydney Morning Herald’s person on the Paul Keating and John Howard circus for a week each, I’d phone in stories to the copy takers, converting scribbled notes to news or colour stories on the fly.<\/p>\n

I relied on calls from head office or the reporter on the other bus, to find out what was happening outside my bubble.<\/p>\n

Oh, and I was followed by a video camera held by Andy Nehl or Liz Jakubowski, who were making a documentary watching the watchers.<\/p>\n

They had funding from SBS to document the campaign from a reporter’s\u00a0perspective, and three other outsider-insiders had agreed to be their patsies – SBS political correspondent Alan Sunderland, Triple J national affairs reporter Sarah MacDonald and Australian Financial Review chief political correspondent Tom Burton.<\/p>\n

The result was Media Rules\u00a0which laid bare the impotence of the press gallery and emptiness of our role. The nature of the bus bubble hasn’t changed much over the years, from what I’ve read, and the old media has done little or nothing to disrupt its rules.<\/p>\n