Bolt's columns did not deserve to see the light of day. End of story

Cindy · September 30, 2011, 03:37:43 AM

If this is in the wrong place please move it.

Some background. Andrew Bolt is a high profile right wing (for Australia) columnist. I rarely read his stuff as it is too right wing for me to even be interested in. But he is very popular. He appears to me to be an anti-everything person, JMO. He wrote an article about Australian Aboriginals that named individuals that I did read, I thought it was rude, muck racking and sensationalist. The people he named in the article took him to court and the court in Aus decided that the article was racial vilification. This guy is now writing articles that his right to free speech has been compromised.

The article I reproduce is by the ex-editor of 'The Age' a major Australian newspaper that is not owned by Rupert, Andrew works for Rupert BTW.

I thought it was a nice article that also contained lessons for how we write our comments and replies.
Cindy

Bolt's columns did not deserve to see the light of day. End of story
Michael Gawenda

http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/3071066.html

When I was editor of The Age, I thought about hiring Andrew Bolt as a columnist. Indeed, I think I even met with him to see whether he had any interest in coming back to the Age. (Bolt was on the Age staff when I joined the paper in the early 80s.) I thought Bolt might add ... how should put it ... a certainly unpredictability to The Age oped page. As it was, I don't think Bolt had any interest in joining the red rag I edited and looking back, I'm glad it never happened. That's because inevitably, sooner or later, Bolt would write a column that I would refuse to publish. And then I'd have a martyr to free speech on my hands.
I would not have published the two columns for which Bolt was found to have contravened the Racial Discrimination Act. I would not have published them firstly because (I hope) in the editing process, there would have been questions raised – by me, by the oped page editor, by our lawyers perhaps — about the "facts" on which Bolt built his pieces which basically argued that some people had chosen to identify themselves as Aborigines to reap material rewards of one kind or another. I would not have published them even if the columns were factually accurate because I thought the tone of the columns was nasty and demeaned the people he was writing about.

News:

Bolt's columns did not deserve to see the light of day. End of story

Cindy