Sharri Markson

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.

She is the winner of numerous awards in journalism, including two Walkley Awards.

Markson was born and raised in Sydney to Jewish parents.

Her father is celebrity promoter Max Markson.

Markson attended Ascham School.

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.

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.

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.

In 2012, she led a team of journalists who won a Walkley Award for TV news reporting.

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.

Markson was recruited as the Australian editor of Cleo in 2013.

Her tenure as editor involved launching a fight for equal pay for men and women named "Ditch the pay GAP".

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.

While editor, Markson made the decision to no longer mention sex on the magazine's cover.

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.

Markson replaced Simon Benson as media editor of The Australian newspaper in February 2014.

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.

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."

A month after the coverage, Markson was the subject of an anti-semitic threat.

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.

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

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" 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.

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.

The ABC attributed the story to Markson 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.

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.

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.

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.