Responding to Marr's 2003 Colin Simpson Lecture, 'The Role of the Writer in John Howard's Australia', Lawson argues that journalists - as well as writers - have a role to play in presenting the citizens of a country with factual evidence of current events. Lawson goes further and suggests that 'Marr's challenge should therefore be not only to writers, but equally to agents, publishers, commissioning editors, critics and reviewers, the whole writing-publishing network'.