Andrew Bolt

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Andrew Bolt is an Australian columnist, writing predominantly for the Rupert Murdoch-owned News Limited stable of newspapers. Bolt's current role is as a politically conservative and religiously agnostic columnist and associate editor of the Melbourne-based Herald Sun. He also makes regular television appearances on the Nine Network's Today programme and the weekly Australian Broadcasting Corporation panel programme, Insiders. In 2005, Bolt released his first book, titled The Best of Andrew Bolt - Still Not Sorry

Contents

1 Background
2 Controversy and criticism
3 On-line forum
4 External links

Background

Born in 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, one of the precursors to the Herald Sun (the other was The Sun News-Pictorial), in 1985. 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 children.

Controversy and criticism

Bolt is an outspoken exponent of conservative political and social views. His statements are sometimes seen as controversial; however he says his columns are well researched and based on fact, rather than popular opinion. He denies the existence of the so-called stolen generation of Australian aborigines, based on the 1995 report "Bringing Them Home: the stolen children report." He downplays the threat of global warming and strongly supported the Iraq War in 2003. He comes under fire for questioning why many of the taxpayer funded arts grants, particularly in Victoria, are spent on "festivals for the wealthy elite," funding for left-wing writers, and journalists who write that universities need more money. He also condemns the Greens in particular of preaching "nature worship" and the Labor governments (led by Premier Steve Bracks) refusal to build more dams or re-direct rivers to deal with the on-going water shortage crisis. He commonly refers to those who pertain to left-wing and green ideologies (university students in particular) as victims of "groupthink."

Critics of Bolt include Crikey founder and ABC presenter Stephen Mayne and Sydney Morning Herald writer and former presenter of the ABC program Media Watch David Marr. They say that Bolt makes many sensationalist claims which are rarely backed up with any evidence, and that the evidence he does use is highly questionable. His critics dismiss many of the references Bolt provides as irreputable for personal reasons, to which Bolt responds asking them to respond and rebut the facts provided rather than the people who provide them.

A famous argument between Bolt and Marr started with the 21 July 2003 episode of Media Watch. Marr claimed that Bolt's article A Kick Up The Arts (2 June 2003), unfairly treated the subject of the article-writer Alison Broinowski by claiming she had misused 3 small taxpayer-funded arts grants by writing a book saying Australia had deserved the 2002 Bali bombing. Marr claimed that Bolt had actually misquoted her, that she had said that "racist bigots in Malaysia" thought Australia deserved the Bali bombing. Marr also said she had only received two grants.

Bolt responded to Marr, what followed was a very heated exchange on the next episode of Media Watch; Marr first retracted one claim (about the number of grants; Broinowski had actually received the three grants as Bolt had said). Bolt demanded an apology live on Media Watch saying Marr had told lies about him. Marr responded by saying that Bolt very much likes dishing criticism towards people, but cannot take it himself[link]; Bolt said the same about Marr.[here]

The next week Bolt wrote an article claiming that the ABC, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and some other newspapers favour left-wing political views.

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 strongly rumoured, but never proven, that someone in Alexander Downer's office had leaked the document to Bolt.[link]

On occasion Bolt's columns have led to legal action against either the Herald Sun or Bolt himself. In 2002, Magistrate Jelena Popovic sued the publishers of the Herald Sun and Bolt for libel. The Victorian Supreme Court awarded $246,000 AUD based on their having published Bolt's claim that she had "hugged two drug traffickers she let walk free", when she in fact shook their hands to congratulate them on having completed a rehabilitation program. The award was against the jury's determination which was to dismiss the claim by Magistrate Popovic.^{[[Citing sources citation needed]]} On appeal to the Court of Appeal of Victoria set aside $25,000 AUD of the original award.

Other criticisms made of Bolt are that he uses evidence selectively, smears individuals and uses hyperbole and emotive language in his columns.^{[[Citing sources citation needed]]} In response, Bolt says he is motivated by the desire to stimulate public debate in Australia, a country which he says does not see enough of it, and which is too often apathetic towards current issues of importance.^{[[Citing sources citation needed]]}

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 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.)

Posters to the forum have debated Andrew Bolt and each other on a variety of topics, often but not always arising from his articles, including abortion, Australian politics, the role of Muslims in Australian society and the existence of God. Bolt frequently 'snips' out large portions of contributions in an effort to keep comments to a reasonable length and remove swearing and personal abuse. He has banned some flamers, partly in an attempt to limit the time it takes him to manage the forum. Despite its low budget format, the forum was a pioneering experiment in Internet-aided "interactive journalism".

External links

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