Andrew Bolt

Andrew Bolt (born September 26, 1959) is an Australian newspaper columnist. Politically conservative and right wing, Bolt is a columnist and associate editor of the Melbourne-based Herald Sun. He also writes for Brisbane's Sunday Mail, and regularly appears on the Nine Network's Today programme and the weekly Australian Broadcasting Corporation panel programme, Insiders as well as Melbourne station 3AW. 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 a vigorous exponent of largely conservative political and social views. His statements are sometimes controversial; he says that his columns are well researched and based on fact, rather than popular opinion. He denies the existence of the Stolen Generation of Australian Aborigines, argues that the dangers of global warming have been greatly exaggerated and he strongly supported the Iraq War in 2003.

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[1]. Bolt frequently accuses the ABC, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and some other newspapers of strong left-wing bias.[2]

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.[3] The Australian Federal Police says it doesn't have any "admissible evidence" to identify the culprit.[4]

Bolt was again linked with Mr Downer by Kevin Rudd after a column on August 30, 2006 in which Bolt wrote[5] 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. His column came two days after Downer had attacked Australian media for dishonesty in its reporting of the Lebanon conflict and said that reports of warplanes hitting ambulances with missiles were a "hoax".[6] Bolt cited photographic evidence from media coverage to argue that the initial reports were clearly false, noting an essay[7] at the Zombietime website "whose research I’ve drawn on". The next day, Downer explained how he had realised that the initial reports were false:[8]

[m]y reaction to that was that the ambulance would have been pulverised if it had been hit by a missile. That was just what I thought at the time, and subsequently photographs of the ambulance were drawn to my attention.

On the same day, Rudd challenged Downer to reveal his sources, asking "Are they Andrew Bolt or Zombietime?"[9], and Bolt wrote a detailed rebuttal[10] to two stories criticising him in The Australian (including the one just cited). Bolt later published an independent debunking of the "hoax" by an Australian military source[11] and a detailed analysis of contradictions in newspaper reports.[12]

Bolt also denounces the state Labor government of Victoria (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.

Bolt has frequently clashed with Robert Manne, Professor of Politics at La Trobe University, notably about the Stolen Generation. Bolt claims that there were no large-scale removals of children "for purely racist reasons". After Bolt challenged Manne to "name just 10" children stolen for racial reasons,[13] Manne gave him a list of 12 names which, Bolt contends, includes children rescued from sexual abuse and removed for other humanitarian reasons.[14] Manne has recently argued that Bolt's failure to address the wealth of documentary and anecdotal evidence demonstrating the existence of the Stolen Generation amounts to a clear case of historical denialism[15]. Bolt has noted multiple incidents of contemporary Aboriginal children being left "in grave danger that we would not tolerate for children of any other race because we are so terrified of the 'stolen generations' myth."[16]

Bolt 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, comments which were brought up in federal parliament in a speech by Senator George Brandis.

Defamation and claims of 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. 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."

In 2000 Bolt’s accuracy and honesty as a journalist was challenged in a book written by Ken Blyth, the captain of an oil tanker that was seized by pirates in the South China Sea. Bolt has denied Blyth's allegation.

File:Petropirates.jpg

"Petro Pirates", the book in which Captain Ken Blyth describes Bolt's reporting as "fanciful".

In Petro Pirates, 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" 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 claimed the reality did not match Bolt’s "brave tale" in his later articles. He disputed that Bolt refused to sign a confession that he had made up his earlier story. Blyth claimed Bolt did sign a statement admitting his story was "seriously inconsistent with facts" and wrote an apology. Blyth said Bolt’s "irresponsible and inaccurate" reports worsened his situation and led to tighter security than he had been experiencing.

In a blog posting in February 2007 Bolt described Blyth's claims as "a falsehood". He had "signed a statement agreeing that what Blyth had told me about the hijacking of his ship was seriously inconsistent with what the Chinese navy and police told me" (Bolt's emphasis).

Blog (previously 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, including climate change, the ABC and issues concerned with Islam. It has a similar format to fellow conservative blogger Tim Blair's site, in that a large number of short snippets of news and culture are published. Bolt states that abusive posting on his blog will be banned, however opposing voices are not. The majority of posters on the site support Bolt's positions. The site Boltwatch [17] provides a forum for people who dispute the content and method by which Andrew Bolt's work is constructed.

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.

External links

• Andrew Bolt's Herald Sun site.
• Andrew Bolt's Blog
• Boltwatch - A blog which criticises Bolt and his writings.
• Transcript of the Bolt/ Popovic Case
• June 2004 Interview with Bolt by the Institute of Public Affairs