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Sharri Markson
Markson in 2013
Born (1984-03-08) 8 March 1984 (age 40)
Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
OccupationJournalist
Years active2000−present
Spouse
Chaz Heitner
​
(m. 2017)​

Sharri Markson (born 8 March 1984) is an Australian journalist and author. She is investigations editor at The Australian and host of the Sky News Australia program Sharri, which airs 8-9pm Monday - Thursday.[1][2] She is the winner of numerous awards in journalism, including two Walkley Awards.

Early life

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Markson was born and raised in Sydney to Jewish parents.[3] Her father is celebrity promoter Max Markson.[3] Markson attended Ascham School.

Career

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Early career

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Markson began her journalism career as a copy girl at The Sunday Telegraph at the age of 16. She was promoted to the state political reporter, Canberra correspondent, and finally, chief of staff.[4]

She twice won the Young Journalist of the Year Award and did secondments at the New York Post and The Sun in London. As political reporter for The Sunday Telegraph in Canberra, Markson revealed Tony Abbott missed the $42 billion stimulus package vote in Parliament because he fell asleep after a night of drinking.[5]

Seven Network

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Markson joined the Seven Network in 2011, and was commended in the Walkley Awards for an investigation that revealed Deputy Premier Andrew Stoner's rush to cash in on the solar-bonus scheme subsidy for solar panels on his roof after then Premier Kristina Keneally announced it was shutting down. The coverage was cited as the first scandal of the newly elected New South Wales O'Farrell government.[6]

In 2012, she led a team of journalists who won a Walkley Award for TV news reporting.[3][7] The team reported a cabinet leak that revealed the NSW government banned the sale of unleaded petrol without ethanol, to the benefit of the monopoly company, Dick Honan's Manildra Group, against departmental advice, in a move that would increase the price of petrol for consumers.[8]

Cleo

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Markson was recruited as the Australian editor of Cleo in 2013.[9] Her tenure as editor involved launching a fight for equal pay for men and women named "Ditch the pay GAP".[10] The magazine also ran a prominent investigation into companies that were paying women less than men by examining the financial statements of 100 Australian companies.[11]

While editor, Markson made the decision to no longer mention sex on the magazine's cover.[12] In the same year, coverage in Cleo triggered an investigation at the University of Sydney into sexual harassment occurring during initiation ceremonies at the University's prestigious colleges.[13]

The Australian

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Markson replaced Simon Benson as media editor of The Australian newspaper in February 2014.[14] She shifted to a senior writing role in 2015.

Markson's work has occasionally attracted controversy. In November 2015, she was detained by Israeli security officials for breaching protocol during a visit to the Ziv Medical Centre in Safed by attempting to speak with and maintain contact with a Syrian national being treated at the hospital.[15]

She wrote stories about The Sydney Morning Herald columnist, Mike Carlton's abusive and anti-semitic emails and tweets to readers during the Israel-Hamas conflict in Gaza. Carlton resigned from Fairfax after being told he would be suspended over the correspondence. Fairfax's publisher, Sean Aylmer, told 2UE, "The column was fine. The issue wasn't the printing of the column. What sort of got him into trouble was the way he responded to those readers, and it was totally inappropriate, using very inappropriate language."[16] A month after the coverage, Markson was the subject of an anti-semitic threat.[17] Online media site Mumbrella wrote that her tenure as media editor involved the aggressive pursuit of stories involving the ABC and Fairfax Media and for her reporting on Mike Carlton.[18]

The Daily Telegraph

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In September 2016, she was appointed national political editor for The Daily Telegraph.[18]

Markson won a Walkley Award "Scoop of the Year" in 2018 alongside journalists Kylar Loussikian and Chris Dore for coverage of Barnaby Joyce's affair and "love child" with a parliamentary staffer that ultimately led to Joyce's resignation as Australia's Deputy Prime Minister.[19] The story, "Bundle of Joyce", featured Joyce's girlfriend, Vicki Campion, walking across the street while pregnant. The story was initially met with controversy, with some journalists, commentators, and politicians claiming the affair and pregnancy should have been kept secret from the public. Markson argued the story was in the public interest.[20] Later coverage by Markson revealed that Campion had been awarded jobs for which she was not qualified in the offices of other government politicians, and that Joyce had lied about the affair to then-Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull. The story led to Turnbull announcing a "bonk ban" that banned ministers from having sexual relations with their staff members.[21]

The allegations were first alluded to by Markson in an article entitled "Barnaby Joyce battles vicious innuendo as Coalition fears citizenship woe" that stated Joyce was "in the grip of a deeply personal crisis"[citation needed] on 21 October 2017. Serkan Ozturk of True Crime News Weekly has claimed that he first broke the story on 24 October 2017, almost six months before Markson's article.[22] An assessment of the claim by The Guardian Australia concluded that while True Crime News Weekly did report on a series of rumours regarding Joyce, including that Joyce was having an affair and with a staffer, Markson was able to substantiate the name of the staffer and the specific details of the affair including the pregnancy.[23] The ABC attributed the story to Markson[24] and noted that Markson had offered Joyce and Campion a sit-down portrait as an alternative to the front-page picture that attracted controversy.

In the same year, Markson won a Kennedy Award for Journalism for Scoop of the Year and Political Journalist of the Year and the overall award for journalist of the year.[25]

In 2018 Markson won the Sir Keith Murdoch Award for Excellence in Journalism, which was presented to her by Rupert and Lachlan Murdoch at an awards ceremony in Sydney.[26]

As political editor of The Daily Telegraph, Markson also broke news of the impending leadership coup against Malcolm Turnbull by Peter Dutton. On 17 August 2018 Markson was the first to report Dutton was being urged to seize the leadership "within weeks" by conservative MPs unhappy with Malcolm Turnbull's leadership.[27] She followed up her story by breaking another story the next day that Dutton was seriously considering launching a challenge for the prime ministership.[28] The coverage of the leadership coup led Markson to jointly win (along with David Speers) the 2019 Federal Parliamentary Press Gallery Journalist of the Year Award presented by the National Press Club of Australia.[29]

In June 2018 she attended the AIJAC-sponsored Rambam Fellowship Program in Israel, along with other journalists and politicians.[30]

Sky News Live

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Markson began hosting a self-titled weekly program on Sky News Live from 9 October 2018.[31] As of 1 August 2019 the program is broadcast on Sunday night at 6 pm where it attracted a viewership reach of 314,000 viewers.[32] The debut episode of ''Sharri'' was "reached" by 105,000 viewers over the course of an hour, according to Sky News at its original time of Monday night.[33]

In 2019, Markson won another Kennedy Award for columnist of the year and in 2021 for Outstanding Nightly Current Affairs.[34]

2019 Federal election coverage

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Main article: 2019 Australian federal election

[35] During the federal election campaign, Markson took her five-month-old baby on the campaign trail, where they travelled with the prime minister on his private plane. Markson's baby was present for an exclusive sit-down interview with Prime Minister Scott Morrison.[36]

In May 2019, Markson described herself as being "smashed on social media" after stating on air eight days before election day that the Coalition government was in a competitive position to be re-elected.[37] Markson's analysis defied the majority of polling and public opinion that expected an electoral victory for then-opposition leader Bill Shorten, and rather predicted the Coalition parties would come to win the election by taking a few key seats in Victoria, New South Wales, and crucially, Queensland. Markson later credited the Coalition victory to a significant turnaround by leader Scott Morrison in key marginal areas.[38]

COVID-19 origins reporting

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See also: Investigations into the origin of COVID-19 and COVID-19 lab leak theory

Markson has reported on and written extensively on the origins of COVID-19 pandemic.[39][40] Her reporting has been described by The Sydney Morning Herald as being part of a counter-narrative that advances the case that the COVID-19 pandemic originated from a laboratory leak in opposition to the findings of the World Health Organization in March 2021 on the origins of the virus.[41]

In May 2020, reporting by Markson in The Daily Telegraph claimed that the Wuhan Institute of Virology could be the source of COVID-19, citing a 15-page government dossier. The Sydney Morning Herald critiqued the reporting as intimating the dossier as originating from a Five Eyes intelligence source.[42][43][44] In May 2021, Markson published excerpts of a document that showed Chinese military scientists "discussed the weaponisation of SARS coronaviruses five years before the Covid-19 pandemic". The Guardian accused Markson of promoting conspiracy theories, noting that the document cited was a book that was widely available in Chinese and that books of its nature tended to be sensational and conspiratorial. In response, Markson argued that the book was published by the Chinese Military Medical Science Press, a Chinese government-owned publishing house managed by the General Logistics Department of the People's Liberation Army.[45] Tory Shepherd of The Guardian cited Markson's appearance on Steve Bannon's podcast, where she stated that Anthony Fauci "must answer" for his alleged involvement into research weaponising viruses, as well as on US Fox News in June 2021 as examples of Markson's reporting finding fertile ground in the right-wing of the U.S media.[46] Shepherd also cited John Lee who pointed out that "the evidence is building and you have significant proportions of the scientific, expert, political and intelligence community saying [the lab leak] is a credible theory."[46]

On 20 September 2021, Sky News Australia broadcast a documentary by Markson entitled What Really Happened in Wuhan that featured an exclusive interview with former US president Donald Trump, former US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and former US director of national intelligence John Ratcliffe.[47] The documentary also featured an interview with Chinese human rights activist Wei Jingsheng, who claimed in the documentary that he attempted to warn United States authorities about COVID-19 in October 2019 after being informed of an outbreak by contacts in Beijing.[48] The documentary attracted 260,000 viewers and was Sky News Australia's most popular program of 2021 at the time of broadcast.[49]

Publications

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  • What Really Happened in Wuhan: a Virus Like No Other, Countless Infections, Millions of Deaths. HarperCollins. 2021. ISBN 978-1-4607-6108-3. OCLC 1250305684.

References

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  1. ^ "Sharri Markson | Author at The Australian". The Australian. Retrieved 22 October 2022.
  2. ^ Crabb, Annabel (18 July 2005). "Media soiled in London terror trickery". The Age. Fairfax Media. Retrieved 13 January 2017.
  3. ^ a b c Leys, Nick (9 December 2012). "At just 28, TV journalist Sharri Markson to take the reins at Cleo". The Australian. Retrieved 28 November 2022.
  4. ^ "At just 28, TV journalist Sharri Markson to take the reins at Cleo". The Australian. 9 December 2012. Retrieved 13 January 2019.
  5. ^ "Tony Abbott slept through key vote". The Daily Telegraph. News Limited Media. 9 December 2012. Retrieved 8 March 2009.
  6. ^ "News Limited leads 2011 Walkleys nominations". Mumbrella. 18 October 2011. Retrieved 8 March 2009.
  7. ^ "Seven wins TV news Walkley Award". Yahoo! News. 3 December 2012. Retrieved 13 January 2017.
  8. ^ "Seven wins TV news Walkley Award". Yahoo News. 18 October 2011. Retrieved 3 December 2012.
  9. ^ Colgan, Paul (15 November 2013). "Cleo Editor Sharri Markson Is Leaving Today After Bauer Merged The Title With Dolly". Business Insider. Archived from the original on 19 November 2013. Retrieved 13 January 2017.
  10. ^ "Ditch the Pay GAP". 15 November 2013. Retrieved 13 January 2019.
  11. ^ "Women Trail on Financial Services Pay". The Age. 15 November 2013. Retrieved 13 January 2019.
  12. ^ O'Brien, Susie (24 November 2013). "How the sexual revolution became so very ordinary". Herald Sun. News Corp. Retrieved 13 January 2017.
  13. ^ McNeilage, Amy (24 November 2019). "College to investigate magazine claims of sexual harassment". The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 13 January 2019.
  14. ^ Christensen, Nic (6 February 2014). "Sharri Markson named new media editor for The Australian, vows to bring more 'attitude'". Mumbrella. Retrieved 13 January 2017.
  15. ^ Knott, Matthew (23 November 2015). "Journalist Sharri Markson detained on Israeli visit". The Sydney Morning Herald. Fairfax Media. Retrieved 13 January 2017.
  16. ^ "Mike Carlton quits Fairfax after anti-semitic abuse of readers". The Australian. 24 November 2019. Retrieved 13 January 2019.
  17. ^ "Markson targeted by anti-Semitic threat". The Times of Israel. 24 November 2019. Retrieved 13 January 2019.
  18. ^ a b Ward, Miranda (23 September 2016). "Sharri Markson joins The Daily Telegraph as national political editor". Mumbrella. Retrieved 13 January 2017.
  19. ^ "Daily Telegraph leads the pack for news-breaking journalism at Kennedy Awards". The Daily Telegraph. Sydney. 1 August 2018. Retrieved 19 October 2018.
  20. ^ "The Barnaby affair". Media Watch. Australian Broadcasting Corporation. 12 February 2018. Retrieved 22 October 2022.
  21. ^ Simon Benson (17 April 2020). "Malcolm Turnbull memoir: Bonk ban to stymie idea 'MPs were screwing staff'". The Australian. Retrieved 22 October 2022.
  22. ^ "'The reasonable person thinks we're fake news': breaking the Barnaby story".
  23. ^ "PM attends Sky News 'housewarming' on night of annual family violence event | Weekly Beast". The Guardian. 30 November 2018. Retrieved 19 September 2021.
  24. ^ Barbour, political reporters Lucy; Henderson, Anna (12 March 2018). "This is how Barnaby Joyce brought himself undone". ABC News. Retrieved 20 September 2021.
  25. ^ "Sharri Markson wins Kennedy Foundation journalist of the year award". Mumbrella. 1 August 2019. Retrieved 19 October 2018.
  26. ^ "Year of Innovation and Awards Prove News Corp is taking journalism to new heights". The Daily Telegraph. 1 August 2019. Retrieved 19 October 2018.
  27. ^ "Conservative coalition MPs urging Peter Dutton to replace Turnbull". The Daily Telegraph. 1 August 2019. Retrieved 19 October 2018.
  28. ^ "MPs who say PM has shown no improvenment continue to back home affairs minister". The Daily Telegraph. 1 August 2019. Retrieved 19 October 2018.
  29. ^ "Sky news presenters joint press gallery winners". TVTonight. 1 August 2019. Retrieved 19 October 2018.
  30. ^ "Rambam journos report back". The Australian Jewish News. 21 December 2015. Retrieved 19 October 2018.
  31. ^ "Daily Telegraph political editor Sharri Markson to host Sky News program". The Daily Telegraph. 5 October 2018. Retrieved 5 October 2018.
  32. ^ "Sky news records record ratings for Covid19 crisis coverage". mediaweek. 1 August 2019.
  33. ^ Carmody, Broede (16 October 2018). "Sharri Markson fails to spark in Sky News debut". The Sydney Morning Herald.
  34. ^ Knox, David (12 November 2021). "Kennedy Awards 2021: Winners". TV Tonight. Retrieved 11 November 2021.
  35. ^ Knox, David (12 November 2021). "Kennedy Awards 2021: Winners". TV Tonight.
  36. ^ "The final week: Why Scott Morrison is feeling upbeat". The Daily Telegraphy. 1 August 2019.
  37. ^ Loomes, Phoebe (19 May 2019). "Sky News commentator Sharri Markson predicted Liberal win eight days before election". news.com.au.
  38. ^ "The final week: Why Scott Morrison is feeling upbeat". The Daily Telegraphy. 1 August 2019.
  39. ^ "'What Really Happened in Wuhan': US authorities ignored virus warning". Sky News Australia. 14 September 2021. Retrieved 19 September 2021.
  40. ^ Riah Matthews (8 May 2021). "Leaked documents reveal China's sinister virus plan". news.com.au. Retrieved 19 September 2021.
  41. ^ Visentin, Lisa (6 August 2021). "China Daily attacks News Corp reporter Sharri Markson over Wuhan lab leak coverage". The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 19 September 2021.
  42. ^ Bagshaw, Anthony Galloway, Eryk (6 May 2020). "Australian concern over US spreading unfounded claims about Wuhan lab". The Sydney Morning Herald. Retrieved 8 May 2021.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link)
  43. ^ "Sharri Markson's coronavirus 'bombshell' impresses Fox's Tucker Carlson | Weekly Beast". The Guardian. 8 May 2020. Retrieved 8 May 2021.
  44. ^ Welch, Dylan (25 May 2020). "US State Department (not spies) penned 'non-paper' timeline of China's alleged COVID cover-up". ABC News (Australia). Retrieved 8 May 2021.
  45. ^ Meade, Amanda; Hurst, Daniel (13 May 2021). "News Corp exclusive on Chinese 'bioweapons' based on discredited 2015 book of conspiracy theories". The Guardian. Retrieved 15 May 2021.
  46. ^ a b Shepherd, Tory (13 July 2021). "Covid origins: Australia's role in the feedback loop promoting the Wuhan lab leak theory". The Guardian. Retrieved 22 October 2022.
  47. ^ "'Obvious' sign Covid 'came from lab'". news.com.au. 20 September 2021. Retrieved 21 September 2021.
  48. ^ Carey, Alexis (15 September 2021). "Covid-19 coronavirus: Chinese defector Wei Jingsheng claims he warned US of Covid months before pandemic declared". The New Zealand Herald. Retrieved 28 September 2021.
  49. ^ Elsworth, Sophie (21 September 2021). "Sharri Markson's Wuhan documentary the most-watched Sky News program of 2021". The Australian. Retrieved 22 September 2021.
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