In light of recent events
Who’s preferencing whom?October 3, 2011
Monthly Wire
Andrew Bolt Profile in October issue
Update: The first 1600 words of Anne Summers' profile of Andrew Bolt is now published online (subscription required to read the entire piece, at 6700 words).
Update: 'Bolt an opportunist keen on Fox News, says writer' - Karl Quinn, the Age, October 5
The recent Federal Court finding against Andrew Bolt condemns the News Ltd columnist in no uncertain terms: it notes that his offending columns in 2009 (which had breached the Racial Discrimination Act) contained “untruthful facts” and “distortion of the truth”, and that Bolt’s conduct “lacked objective good faith”.
So how did the son of Dutch migrants and the boy from outback SA – who a former fiancée remembers as “introverted, restless, romantic”, with strong ethics and an opposition to sensationalist journalism – end up this way?
Anne Summers (‘The Bolt Factor’, October) may have some answers: Is it simply that he has aged and “settled down at the Little House on the Prairie”? Or is it a pragmatic manipulation of the fact that “to succeed in today’s media you need to create controversy”? According to one colleague, “[Bolt] saw the political power that comes from right-wing ranting, and he appointed himself to do it.”
The Monthly’s October issue will be on the shelves on 7 October …
Anne Summers is a Walkley Award–winning journalist. She was formerly the Canberra bureau chief for the Australian Financial Review, a reporter for the National Times, correspondent for the Far Eastern Economic Review and Le Monde, editor-in-chief of Ms. Magazine, editor of Good Weekend. She was a columnist for the Sydney Morning Herald and the Courier Mail, and contributes to the Age and the Sunday Age.
Ghost notes: Simon Tedeschi’s ‘Fugitive’
A virtuoso memoir of music and trauma, and his experiences as a child prodigy, from the acclaimed Australian pianist
The quip and the dead: Steve Toltz’s ‘Here Goes Nothing’
A bleakly satirical look at death and the afterlife from the wisecracking author of ‘A Fraction of the Whole’
Election special: Who should you vote for?
Undecided about who to vote for in the upcoming federal election? Take our quiz to find out your least-worst option!Election special: Who should you vote for?
Undecided about who to vote for in the upcoming federal election? Take our quiz to find out your least-worst option!
Remembrance or forgetting?
The Australian War Memorial and the Great Australian Silence
Property damage
What will it take for Australia to fix the affordable housing crisis?
Present indicative: Daniel Johns’ ‘FutureNever’
The former Silverchair frontman’s second solo album lacks cohesion, but affords him space to excavate his past
