Andrew Bolt Totally Explained

Everything about Andrew Bolt totally explained

Andrew Bolt (born 26 September 1959) is an Australian newspaper columnist and conservative pundit. 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 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 Sally Morrell, a fellow Herald Sun columnist. They have three young children.

Controversy and criticism

Bolt often supports economically liberal and socially right wing conservative views. His statements have often been seen as controversial; he says that his columns are well researched and based on fact, rather than popular opinion. He is sceptical of the hypothesis of a racially motivated Stolen Generation of Australian Aborigines, argues that the dangers of global warming have been greatly exaggerated, and 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'd also erred on the number of grants Broinowski had received. (Marr later retracted the second accusation). 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 couldn't take it himself.(External Link

). Bolt frequently accuses the ABC, The Sydney Morning Herald, The Age and some other newspapers of strong left-wing bias.(External Link

)

In June 2003 Bolt published an article criticising Andrew Wilkie in which he quoted from a classified intelligence document written by Wilkie as an intelligence analyst for the Office of National Assessments. It was claimed, but never proven, that someone in Alexander Downer's office had leaked the document to Bolt.(External Link

) The Australian Federal Police says it doesn't have any "admissible evidence" to identify the culprit.(External Link

)

Bolt accused journalists of "passing on as fact the propaganda of terrorists" in their coverage of the 2006 Israel-Lebanon conflict, especially claims that wrote an Israeli missile had been fired through the roof of a Lebanese Red Cross ambulance.(External Link

) He cited photographic evidence from media coverage to argue that the initial reports were clearly false, noting an essay(External Link

) at the Zombietime website "whose research I’ve drawn on". He followed up with posts on his blog, including a detailed rebuttal(External Link

) to two stories criticising him in The Australian, an independent debunking of the "hoax" by an Australian military source(External Link

) and a detailed analysis of contradictions in newspaper reports.(External Link

)

Bolt also denounces the state Labor government of Victoria (led by Premier John Brumby) for its refusal to dam the Mitchell River, which is prone to serious floods, or re-direct rivers to deal with the on-going water shortage crisis. He commonly refers to those who espouse left-wing and green ideas (university students in particular) as victims of "groupthink" and is a relentless critic of broadcaster and journalist Phillip Adams. He sometimes writes of his liking for cycling and poffertjes.

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,(External Link

) Manne gave him a list of 12 names which, Bolt contends, includes children rescued from sexual abuse and removed for other humanitarian reasons.(External Link

) 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 (External Link

). Bolt has noted multiple incidents of contemporary Aboriginal children being left "in grave danger that we wouldn't tolerate for children of any other race because we're so terrified of the 'stolen generations' myth."(External Link

)

Bolt argues that taxpayer-funded arts grants, particularly in Victoria, are in spent on "festivals for the wealthy elite," and funding for left-wing writers. He denounces the Greens, claiming that they preach "Gaia worship" and has drawn parallels between the anti-humanism of Greens and Nazism. He is highly critical of Global Warming and climate change proponents such as Tim Flannery. Bolt has also been extremely critical of the Earth Hour environmental event which was promoted by another newspaper, the Sydney Morning Herald.

Defamation case

In 2002, Magistrate Jelena Popovic was awarded $246,000 damages for defamation after suing Bolt and the publishers of the Herald Sun over a 13 December 2000 column in which he claimed she'd "hugged two drug traffickers she let walk free". Popovic contended she'd in fact shaken their hands to congratulate them on having completed a rehabilitation program. The jury found that the article wasn't true, that it wasn't a faithful and accurate record of judicial proceedings and that it wasn't 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 hadn't acted reasonably because he didn't seek a response from Ms Popovic before writing the article and, in evidence given during the trial, showed he didn't 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'd 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."

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 posted some of these comments, together with brief responses, in the late afternoon of every business day, on the Herald Sun website. (The forum doesn't appear in print.) Despite its low-budget format, the forum was a pioneering experiment in Internet-aided "interactive journalism".
Bolt's forum changed to a more conventional blog format in July 2006. The blog covers a wide variety of topics, including climate change, Australian politics, the ABC and issues concerned with multiculturalism and Islam. Comments are open and don't require registration, but are moderated to remove defamation of third parties, obscenities and so on. Bolt states that abusive commenters will be banned, but opposing voices will not.

Further Information

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