Andrew Bolt
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Andrew Bolt is an Australian newspaper columnist. Politically conservative and religiously agnostic, Bolt is a columnist and associate editor of the Melbourne-based Herald Sun. He also writes for Brisbane's Sunday Mail, and is a regular commentator on Channel 9's Today show, ABC TV's Insiders, 3AW, Adelaide ABC and 4BC. In 2005, Bolt released his first book, The Best of Andrew Bolt - Still Not Sorry.
Background
Born on 26 September 1959 to newly-arrived Dutch migrants, Bolt spent his childhood in remote rural areas such as Tarcoola, while his father worked as a schoolteacher and principal. After graduating from secondary school, Bolt travelled and worked overseas before returning to Australia and completing a year of university studies. He quit after obtaining a cadetship at The Age, a Melbourne broadsheet newspaper.
He worked for The Age in various roles, including as a sports writer, prior to joining The Herald, which in 1990 merged with The Sun News-Pictorial to form the Herald Sun. Bolt also worked as a political advisor to members of the Australian Labor Party.
He is married to fellow Herald Sun columnist, Sally Morrell. They have three young children.
Controversy and criticism
Bolt is an outspoken exponent of conservative political and social views. His statements are sometimes controversial; however, he says his columns are well researched and based on fact, rather than popular opinion. He denies the existence of the stolen generation of Australian Aborigines, based on the 1995 report "Bringing Them Home: the stolen children report." He argues that the threats of global warming have been greatly exaggerated and he strongly supported the Iraq War in 2003.
In June 2003 Bolt published an article which quoted a classified intelligence document. This document was written by then intelligence analyst for the Office of National Assessments, Andrew Wilkie, who had quit his government job over the Iraq invasion. Wilkie ran for the Greens against John Howard in his local electorate in the 2004 election. It was claimed, but never proven, that someone in Alexander Downer's office had leaked the document to Bolt.[1] Media watch explain that according to evidence to a Senate committee, the ONA had all known copies of the report under lock and key - except the one they gave to the Foreign Minister's office three days before Andrew Bolt's article appeared. The Australian Federal Police says it doesn't have any "admissible evidence" to identify the culprit.[2]
Bolt was again linked with Mr Downer after a column on August 30, 2006 in which Bolt wrote that western newspapers had been duped by claims that an Israeli missile had been fired through the roof of a Lebanese Red Cross ambulance during hostilities in July. His column came two days after Downer had attacked Australian media for "dishonesty, lazy journalism and ignoring the facts" in its reporting of the Lebanon conflict. Downer claimed reports of the ambulance attack were a "hoax". Bolt cited photographic evidence from media coverage which had been gathered[3] and published pseudonymously on the web. When The Australian (published by Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation, also Bolt’s employer) ran an investigative report on August 31 claiming initial Lebanese claims were true, an accompanying editorial criticised Downer for falling for a "propaganda trick". Downer was challenged by Opposition foreign affairs spokesman Kevin Rudd to reveal the sources for his earlier claim, asking: "Are they Andrew Bolt or Zombietime? What are his sources? Are there other sources?"[4]
The Crikey website has also noted the frequency with which Bolt’s columns mirror those of Piers Akerman, his conservative counterpart on the Sydney Daily Telegraph. On September 29, 2005 Crikey provided four recent examples of what it called the "Bolt-Akerman pincer movement", in which the columnists expressed similar sentiments on topics including the Kyoto protocol and global warming within a day of each other.
Bolt also denounces the Labor government (led by Premier Steve Bracks) for its refusal to build more dams or re-direct rivers to deal with the on-going water shortage crisis. He commonly refers to those who harbour left-wing and green ideologies (university students in particular) as victims of "groupthink" and is a relentless critic of broadcaster and journalist Phillip Adams.
He questions why many of the taxpayer-funded arts grants, particularly in Victoria, are spent on "festivals for the wealthy elite," and funding for left-wing writers. He denounces the Greens, in particular for preaching "nature worship" which he claims is a contemporary manifestation of Nazism[1][2], comments which were brought up in federal parliament in a speech by Senator George Brandis
Bolt became involved in a heated dispute with David Marr following the 21 July 2003 episode of Media Watch in which Marr claimed that Bolt's column "A Kick Up The Arts" (2 June 2003) had unfairly represented author Alison Broinowski. Bolt had claimed Broinowski, a recipient of three taxpayer-funded arts grants, had written a book saying the 2002 Bali bombing "was largely Australia’s fault". Marr said Bolt had misquoted the author, who had in fact written that "racist bigots in Malaysia" thought Australia deserved the Bali bombing, and that he had also erred on the number of grants Broinowski had received. (Marr later retracted the second accusation, although he pointed out that Broinowski had received no arts grant since 1985). In a bitter exchange aired through both the Herald Sun and Media Watch, Bolt demanded Marr apologise for lying about him, while Marr countered that Bolt liked dishing out criticism, but could not take it himself[5]. Bolt subsequently wrote an article claiming that the ABC, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and some other newspapers favour left-wing political views.
Defamation and inaccuracy
In 2002, Magistrate Jelena Popovic was awarded $246,000 damages for defamation after suing Bolt and the publishers of the Herald Sun over a December 13, 2000 column in which he claimed she had "hugged two drug traffickers she let walk free". Popovic contended she had in fact shaken their hands to congratulate them on having completed a rehabilitation program.
The jury found that the article was not true, that it was not a faithful and accurate record of judicial proceedings, and that it was not fair comment on a matter of public interest. It found that the column had, however, been reasonable and not malicious.[6] Bolt emerged from the Supreme Court after the jury verdict, insisting his column had been accurate and that the mixed verdict was a victory for free speech.
His statement outside the court was harshly criticised by Supreme Court judge Bernard Bongiorno, who later overturned the jury’s decision, ruling that Bolt had not acted reasonably because he did not seek a response from Ms Popovic before writing the article and, in evidence given during the trial, showed he did not care whether or not the article was defamatory. Justice Bongiorno included $25,000 punitive damages in his award against Bolt and the newspaper for both the "misleading" and "disingenuous" comments he had made outside court and the newspaper’s reporting of the jury’s decision. The Court of Appeal later reversed the $25,000 punitive damages, though it upheld the defamation finding, describing Bolt’s conduct as "at worst, dishonest and misleading and at best, grossly careless." [7]
In 2000 Bolt’s accuracy and honesty as a journalist was challenged in a book written by the captain of an oil tanker seized by pirates in the South China Sea.
In Petro Pirates, Australian captain Ken Blyth related how his vessel, the MT Petro Ranger, along with all crew, was detained by Chinese authorities in Haikou Harbour in April and May 1998 after the pirates were apprehended. Blyth wrote that in May Bolt (then a journalist in News Ltd’s Hong Kong bureau) arrived beside the tanker in a sampan. The pair, separated by about 10 metres, had a brief shouted conversation, Blyth warning that Bolt risked being shot by the Chinese soldiers guarding the Petro Ranger. Blyth rejects as fanciful Bolt’s published claim that he had yelled: "For God's sake don't come on board or they'll shoot us all", denies he asked for a message to be passed to his wife and says he did not ask Bolt to contact Foreign Affairs in Australia for him.
Bolt returned to the tanker the next day, but was intercepted by a military patrol boat and escorted to Haikou for questioning. Blyth claims the reality did not match Bolt’s brave tale in his later articles. He disputes that soldiers on board the tanker fired over Bolt’s head as he tried to flee in his boat (crewmen on the vessel told Blyth soldiers fired up in the air); and also that Bolt refused to sign a confession that he had made up his earlier story (Blyth claims Bolt did sign a statement admitting his story was "seriously inconsistent with facts" and wrote an apology). Blyth claims Bolt’s "irresponsible and inaccurate" reports worsened his situation and led to tighter security than he had been experiencing.
On-line forum
In May 2005, Bolt established an on-line forum in which readers could offer comments, feedback and questions in response to his columns. He posts some of these comments, together with brief responses, in the late afternoon of every business day, on the Herald Sun website. (The forum does not appear in print.) Despite its low budget format, the forum was a pioneering experiment in Internet-aided "interactive journalism". In July 2006, he moved to a more conventional blog format.
Bolt's blog covers a wide variety of topics, and posters are encouraged to not only use rational debate to discuss matters, but to entertain each other. Posters frequently post riddles and try to get the answers, or interact in a friendly way about a range of topics. Posts which are unacceptably long are "snipped" or disallowed entirely, as are obscene and defamatory posts. Bolt has also been known to prohibit constant and repetitive abusive posters from posting on his blog, in order to improve the quality of the discussion.
References
- Andrew Bolt (2005). Still Not Sorry: The Best of Andrew Bolt. News Custom Publishing. ISBN 1-921116-02-1.
- Captain Ken Blyth (2000). Petro Pirates: The Hijacking of the Petro Ranger. Allen & Unwin. ISBN 1-86508-368-2.