Twitter Flashback: 2010 - The Age Newspaper Sacks "Outrageous" Columnist Over Logies Tweets

Twitter Flashback.

THE AGE NEWSPAPER FIRES MOST POPULAR COLUMNIST BECAUSE SHE UPSET RUPERT MURDOCH'S THUGS AND GOONS

May, 2010: The Melbourne Age newspaper has fired one of Australia's most successful comediasn for using her Twitter feed to snark hard on the Logie Awards, and its participants.

Dullards and wankstains from 2GB, 3AW and crimelord Rupert Murdoch's Herald Sun, Daily Telegraph, Courier Mail, The Australian (media that employs people to scan celebrities Twitter feeds as a full-time job) went in hard and chanted in unison Fairfax had to fire Deveny, while News Corp created, launched and ran a Boycott The Age Advertisers/Cancel Your Subscription campaign, across Murdoch newspapers, nationwide.

Of course The Age caved in. They fired Deveny.

Deveny responded she was using satire "to expose celebrity raunch culture and the sexual objectification of women, which is rife on the red carpet".

"It was just passing notes in class, but suddenly these notes are being projected into the sky and taken out of context," she said.

This wasn't Deveny's first Twitter crime against all that was still good and sacred in Australian media, and all that they held sacred.A week earlier, Australia's conservative media got all frothy and furious because Deveny tweeted:

"Anzac Day shits me."

Deveny: "People who are offended by tweets are probably the same people who find Hey Hey funny, a show that I find deeply offensive."

Deveny said, in 2010, most of the public, and older journalists, did not understand Twitter.

"Twitter is not a news source, but it is starting to be used as one".

"Six months ago Twitter was just people saying 'Oh my God, I'm so hung-over,'" she said.

"Now really serious people are using Twitter to communicate, people like Richard Dawkins, Peter Singer, the New Scientist.

"It's about everyone assessing the information for themselves. This is a great challenge for us, to have a sophisticated response to the evolution of communication."

Murdoch media goons came over all politically correct in demanding censorship of Deveny, and Rupert Murdoch allowed his newspapers to call for Advertiser Boycotts of Fairfax newspapers if they kept publishing Deveny's work.

Andrew Bolt, Miranda Devine, Piers Akerman, and nearly every big city Murdoch editor, chanted together subscribers to The Age and Sydney Morning Herald should cancel their subscriptions to 'show Fairfax this can't be tolerated.'

This was Paul Ramadge, editor of The Age in 2010, explaining why he caved into a Boycott Campaign run by Murdochs News Corp and fired one of Fairfax's most popular columnists.

"We are appreciative of the columns Catherine has written for The Age over several years but the views she has expressed recently on Twitter are not in keeping with the standards we set at The Age."

@Catherine Deveny 's Twitter account surged in followers after Fairfax followed the orders of Murdoch thugs and goons, adding more than 1200 more new followers in three hours. In 2010, that was a remarkable surge in Australian Twitter followers.

By midnight on the day of Deveny's May, 2010, dismissal, she had received more than seven hundred responses on Twitter supporting her, railing against The Age and asking what happened to the once legendary Australian sense of humour and love of a piss-take.

Well, the politically correct Murdoch media of the 2010s beat it out of us, didn't they?

Old Media Rages Against Twitter Raging Against The Election

'Why Are You Yelling At Me On Social Media When I'm Only Trying To Wind You Up And Make You React Angrily So I Can Report How Abusive You Are?'

By Darryl Mason

It was inevitable Australia's Old Media and social media, primarily Twitter, would reach end-game territory around a federal election.

That election appears to this one, Federal Election 2019.

It's been a bit grim seeing Old Media's entrenched political journalists lashing out at those they deem "trolls" and "abusers", along with huge sections of their own audiences, including paying customers/subscribers.

Not many from Old Media Press Gallery are coping well as mere people off the street with phones analyse, quote and post political news videos and commentary to bigger audiences on Twitter and Facebook and Instagram than Old Media can often muster, and faster.

But it's been satisfying to see at least a few of the standard cliches of Old Media political news coverage during a federal election have been deflated by social media, like over-reliance on polls and opinion, and so then quietly retreated by Old Media.

If Australians interested in political news have more social media options than ever to get the news that matters, including following and engaging with the politicians themselves, and the feast of fact-checking in comments that usually follows any politician's policy tweets, and there is no shortage of free opinion (all the best writers are on Twitter), then what exactly is left for the 270 member Australian Press Gallery to do to try and lure the political news away from their Twitter timelines? To find that new generation of paying customers?

What can the Old Media-controlled Press Gallery provide that former journalists and public servants and former politicians and senior ministers and all the others with long political experience on social media cannot supply, for free?

Exclusive access to politicians?

Big deal. Has that exclusive access delivered better policies and information to the Australian people? Or do politicians feel free to lie and deceive even more relentlessly now, during Exclusive Interviews, because they know The Interview Routine better than many journalists do?

Has the political industry itself gamed out most of the old political media's best efforts before they even get started?

How many politicians have been caught out in outrageous lies and had to Resign In Disgrace after interviews with Australia's Best Political Journalists, in the past 5 years? Or past decade? Any at all?

What is The Product we're being told is worth buying?

Press Gallery journalists have more duties and live crosses now than in any previous decade. The depth of their daily research is always limited. So they have less time than jobless ex-public servants on Twitter have to actually read through 400 page reports and supply timely analysis.

On social media, just in Australia, there are hundreds of now jobless former public servants who do this analysis work, daily, for free. They should be earning something, particularly when so much of their work acts as research for paid journalists, but they don't stop doing it because they're not paid.

21st century journalists have already realised social media is the greatest research tool journalism has ever had access to. You can ask for help and get it, on almost any subject, if the Google isn't helping. If you say on Twitter you are unsure about info, good people, people who know, will often try and help you. This is not something to be afraid of.

On social media, a journalist can search for people who specialise in a subject that they're writing about, contact them and get help, quicker than a phone call. That kind of fast access to people and good information and research is like a 1970s journalist's ultimate work-related fantasy.

Social media is information, a living breathing world library of info, facts and people who know things.

This New Reality will maybe, finally, sink through to those still bogged down in Old Media bubbles, but for now there's a lot of anger, vitriol and bitterness coming from many in Australian news media, mostly towards their news audiences, probably because it's elections time. But there's not a lot of attempts to understand the news audience the Press Gallery needs to exist is right there in front of them, interacting with them, trying to talk to them, to share information, leads, tips. So what if some are rude? That's what happened when journalists had to go knocking on doors. Some told you to Fack Off, other people gave you a cup of tea and talked for hours. That's What People Are Like.

And anyway, why would anyone working across the top of Australia's news media industry expect all who still bother to engage with them on news to be polite, concise and respectful? That's not exactly the history of the Australian news media industry itself, is it? Or the history of our news media towards the public. This relationship has been long hostile.

The ABC's Michael Rowland:

Twitter is a double-edged sword for political journalists.
It's an invaluable source of breaking news and allows us to keep track of campaign developments in real time.For good and bad, it's a forum for politicians to make unfiltered announcements or respond to criticism from the other side, all of which provides fodder for news stories and commentary. 

"Twitter is a peanut gallery of hyper-partisan tools," Chris Uhlmann laments.

Can't live with it, can't live without it, eh Chris? 

Social media doesn't demand quick action-packed interviews and breezy sound bites on policies. The news audience on social media demands all the data and background info relevant to the subject so proper fact-checking can be carried out. So the news that results, that people on Twitter are willing to put their names to in sharing, is more credible, closer to the truth, and richer with information. People who like sharing quality news aren't big fans of seeing what they shared easily debunked in comments below. Many on Twitter really do care about the quality of information that comes out of the Newsdesk bearing their name.

Now that may not be everyone on Twitter, but there's 1000s more Australians on Twitter  analysing politics and policies and checking for corruption than the entire Australian News Industry has engaged in such tasks.

Some of the political journalists entrenched in Old Media still pretend not much has changed, and that The People Who Really Matter are still spending 3 hours every morning reading through Opinion pages in The Australian and The Financial Review (when virtually no-one outside the media industry is doing anything like that now). They seem to dreamily hope people will soon get sick of this whole internet thing and return to Quality Print Media or something. A belief that remains even while that very print media industry has sacked most of their specialised journalists.

Here's former ABC now Nine-Fairfax political um correspondent Chris Uhlmann on how he deals with those smartypants people on Twitter who, perhaps, might know from their work history or life experiences more about a certain subject than he might:

'I'll post a tweet on federal politics, wait for the notifications of replies to build up on my phone home screen then bulk delete all of them without reading a single word. 

"If I spend even a minute bothered...they win. If I don't engage and they all day getting worked up about it, then I win."

This is an experienced journalist employed by a for-profit news media company explaining how he both ignores and baits his news audience, for his own amusement. He's bullshitting. He reads his own comments, every journalist checks. But Uhlmann clearly hates the debunking and fact-checks he finds.

Fark The Customers, apparently. It's a bizarre attitude, generally, for any employee of an industry losing both profits and audience in double digit percentage points almost every quarter to still hold.

Bizarre an attitude as this is that Chris Uhlmann can still harbour - blaming the news audience for caring about facts and paying attention - this clearly isn't going far enough for Murdoch Crime Family's star goon, Andrew Bolt. He can top it. But how? By hating democracy and the voters responsible for voting:

An American media company campaigning against democracy in Australia. Is that a new level?

'Don't Vote! It's Socialist!'

'Refuse Your Right To Vote!'

'Don't Be A Sheeple! Stop Voting!'

What a curious thing to see the Delaware-based News Corp company trying to guilt-trip Australians against voting in a federal election. A foreign govt, company or person interfering in politics and elections in Australia is supposed to be illegal.

Here's Michael Rowland again, reminding us how terrible it is people interested in News on social media try to engage with journalists who allegedly report News:

According to many veteran political journalists, this Twitter "feedback" is getting much more vicious.
The Courier-Mail's national affairs editor Dennis Atkins said Twitter users had certainly "amped up" over the last few weeks. 

"They are shoutier, they are more tribal. They have never been great ones for considering other points of view, but now they have lost any inclination to do that," he said.
"They are quick to attack the person rather than engage in the merits of an argument."

Dennis Atkins is a veteran Murdoch tabloids journalist listing the bad habits we likely picked up from reading or being exposed to tabloid Australian TV journalism and the Murdoch newspapers most of their lives. Atkins didn't seem aware he was describing the editorial room policies of the tabloids that employed him.

Guardian Australia's political editor Katharine Murphy notes there's often an increase in anxiety and frustration on social media in election campaigns.

She says that's consistent with the polls that tell us voters are deeply disaffected with politics and distrustful of institutions, including media organisations.

"So most of it is that, but I also think elections bring an increase in what I suspect is organised or loosely organised trolling directed against politicians and individual journalists," she said. 

"Some actors are intent on being disruptive on social platforms and picking fights as a means to that end."

Some political journalists are intent on being disruptive and picking fights. They get paid to do it. To inflame the public. Provocation-Reaction. When such journalists thoroughly stir up the public, and people snap, they are deemed "controversial" and "successful" like it's a war on the people they're winning.

Perhaps the news industry could set a better example than the audience they are reporting for? Australians have had 100 years now of vicious, abusive, cruel news media content, feasting off the miseries and tragedies of Australians lives. Isn't a century of anything long enough?

Michael Rowland:

While the hyper-partisans are alert to any perceived "bias", Uhlmann believes one side is way more offensive than the other. 

"While one of the memes of the early 21st century is the rise of the aggressive right, the emergence of what I would call the "post-Christian left" is much more of a worry," he said.

Uh huh. Uhlmann, paid to provide information to people for a living, makes up stupid new terminologies to further categorise and try and belittle his news audience, then announces his New Controversial View on TV and on social media, then wonders why people respond with "hostility" and call him a cliched boring old media hack.

But Uhlmann doesn't actually wonder anything like that. It's not a mystery to him. He knows why people respond that way. He's been trained to provoke his audience, and he clearly enjoys doing it. That's the way the Legends Of Australian Journalism did their work. The more furious the reaction from the News Target, the better the front page and headlines. When Uhlmann was a cub reporter, Serious Journalists, drunk by midday, were still picking fights with mourners at funerals for a "great photo."

Eventually, most of the remaining news audience won't bother responding to Provocation-Reaction journalists, like Uhlmann, at all. They'll tune out, and after a few weeks or months, these news customers will realise that such stock standard Old Media routines are intensely boring, and not missed at all. Not when there's so much excellent news media elsewhere in the world, and on social media, to inform and feed your head.

Maybe the better Old Media journalists will realise in time.

Turnbull: Bolt Is "Unhinged" And "Demented"

The Herald Sun is now trying to recast extremist Andrew Bolt as a happy-go-lucky kind of guy. Good luck

By Darryl Mason

Finally, Malcolm Turnbull has said out loud what I've been writing here on this blog for almost eight years.

Murdoch's Andrew Bolt is "unhinged" and "demented."

Tell us something we don't know.

Turnbull: 

“...it borders on the demented to string together a dinner with Clive Palmer and my attending as the Communications Minister the launch by a cross-party group of friends of the ABC and say that that amounts to some kind of threat or challenge to the Prime Minister.

“It is quite unhinged. Now, Mr Bolt is fond of attacking what he regards as the government’s enemies in the media, principal amongst whom of course he numbers the ABC. I don’t think you would see anything as crazy as that on the ABC.

“Mr Bolt, he proclaims loudly that he is a friend of the government. Well with friends like Bolt, we don’t need any enemies.’

A split within the Liberal Party has been rumbling for months, as PM Abbott continues to plummet in the polls, and he and Treasurer Joe Hockey's extremist Budget 2014-2015 is rejected by an ever growing number of Australians.

Abbott has taken the right wing extremism of Andrew Bolt, The Australian and turd basket lobby group The IPA to the Australian public, has acted on their demands, has echoed their rhetoric, and the Australian public has been repulsed. Not all Australians, but certainly enough to cause the non-right wing nutters of the Liberal Party and their Nationals coalition partners to get nervous indeed. Many Liberal Party backbenchers, for example, are now wondering if Toxic Tony is going to lose them their seats at the next federal election in 2016, or even sooner.

Turnbull well knows that he doesn't need Murdoch media, or Bolt's support, to become prime minister, or to become a popular prime minister. Murdoch's media blew their wad going all out to get Tony Abbott elected PM, and Bolt is seriously tainted by his declared friendship with Abbott. How can anyone trust anything he has to say about Abbott, or Abbott's agenda, when he is known as a serial defender of his pal?

Turnbull's outburst against Andrew Bolt was sparked by a Bolt column today linking Turnbull to Clive Palmer, after their 'secret meeting' dinner in Canberra, and Bolt painted the pair as united against Bolt's buddy Tony Abbott:

Bolt smells the stench of Abbott's impending political death in the air and is trying to head Turnbull off at the pass, questioning his loyalty and trying to rally Abbott supporters in the Coalition against Turnbull and Palmer.

MegaFail.

Turnbull responded to Bolt's conspiracy theory in the stunning doorstop, quoted at the top, with the media a few hours ago. And everything exploded.


Fairfax media, rivals to Murdoch's NewsCorp, home of Bolt, unleashed with obvious glee.

The Australian Financial Review:

Philip Coorey in AFR:

Malcolm Turnbull has labelled columnist Andrew Bolt demented and unhinged after the leading conservative cheerleader suggested the Communications Minister was undermining Prime Minister Tony Abbott.

Mr Turnbull told journalists in Parliament on Monday that Mr Bolt’s theories were damaging the government.

Mr Turnbull was incensed on Sunday when Mr Bolt, while interviewing Mr Abbott on his weekly TV show, asked the Prime Minister: “Now, why is Malcolm Turnbull wooing Clive Palmer on his own? It looks like he’s got his eye on your job.”

This was a reference to a casual dinner in Canberra last week with Mr Turnbull, Mr Palmer, Treasurer Secretary Martin Parkinson and businessmen John Fast and Tom Harley.

The participants all claimed it was a spontaneous and harmless gathering but it spiked paranoia inside the Coalition because Mr Palmer has been refusing to even talk to anyone else in the Coalition until he is given what he considers ample resources.

In his newspaper column on Monday, Mr Bolt continued the attack on Mr Turnbull, saying the dinner sent “an unmistakeable message to Liberal MPs:

“Replace Abbott with Turnbull as prime minister and Maybe Palmer will play ball’’.

Mr Bolt further accused Mr Turnbull of giving comfort to the enemy by launching a new parliamentary group of friends of the ABC.

 The Sydney Morning Herald:

Matthew Knott:

News Corp commentator Andrew Bolt's leadership speculation "borders on the demented" and is ''quite unhinged", says Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull.

Mr Turnbull's dinner with Mr Palmer sparked fears among some in the Coalition that he was attempting to destabilise Mr Abbott's leadership, according to reports.

"It borders on the demented to string together a dinner with Clive Palmer and my attending, as the Communications Minister, the launch by a cross-party group of friends of the ABC and say that that amounts to some kind of threat or challenge to the Prime Minister," Mr Turnbull told reporters on Monday.

"It is quite unhinged. Now, Mr Bolt is fond of attacking what he regards as the government's enemies in the media, principal amongst whom of course he numbers the ABC. I don't think you would see anything as crazy as that on the ABC.

"I just have to say to Mr Bolt, he proclaims loudly that he is a friend of the government. Well with friends like Bolt, we don't need any enemies."

On Monday, Mr Bolt told Fairfax Media: ''It's a great shame and quite telling that Malcolm Turnbull attacks someone he calls the government's media friend with far more vitriol than I can recall him ever attacking one of the government's media enemies.

''This fits a pattern. No doubt he [Turnbull] will expand on this in his next Q & A appearance with Tony Jones.''

What a prissy, sooky reply from Bolt. But then, what else could you expect?

Bolt's readership is dropping away, his blog comment count is a shadow of his glory days and his TV show just can't seem to find any new viewers.

What Abbott is realising, and Bolt probably already knew, is that there is an extremely limited audience and pool of voters in Australia for IPA-style extremism. Bolt can't find more viewers and readers because he's fully tapped the market available.

What Turnbull understands is that there are far more 'soft conservatives' than extremist conservatives, like Bolt, like the IPA, like The Australian's editor Chris Mitchell.

Turnbull knows he can win back a huge slab of Liberal Party voters who feel done over by Abbott since the 2013 election and are now rejecting Budget 2014-2015.

And Turnbull is right.

The action over Abbott's tenuous leadership will grow only more heated from here on in.

UPDATE: The Abboot-Turnbull-Bolt fiasco makes it to Parliament:




From The Orstrahyun Archive...



 2009: The Last Time Andrew Bolt Went To War On Turnbull To Save Abbott

Andrew Bolt: I Don't Know How Twitter Works, But Its Freedom Scares Me

Seriously, What A Fuckwit - Bolt's Biggest Shriek For Attention Yet

Bolt's Reality Meltdown Over Fukushima

Andrew Bolt - I Don't Know How Twitter Works, But Its Freedom Scares Me

 Oh yes, you do.

(quick backgrounder : Andrew Bolt is Australia's most heavily promoted Rupert Mudoch columnist. While never having used Twitter, it was decided that the #AskBolt Twitter hashtag should be used to stir up and "take on the Twitterati", and almost every Murdoch media held Twitter account began pumping out his challenge to Twitter users worldwide. In short, Bolt picked a fight with Twitter, and then hijacked the Usain Bolt #AskBolt hashtag in order to do so).

He can deny it all he wants. But The Bolt Report is an Andrew Bolt Twitter account. And it's official.

It's all a bit sad to see a once innovative political blogger so utterly lost amongst the trees when it comes to Twitter.

Boo Twitter, even though it's where a good slab of his daily blog traffic comes from these days, thanks to regular spammy-link tweeting by numerous NewsCorp automated Twitter accounts. He even has the 'Tweet Me' button on every blog post, along wth the official account for his TV show. He doesn't seem to know about that, either.

#AskBolt was an idiotic idea to begin with, promoting someone who doesn't use Twitter on Twitter, with 'Come And Get Me!' tweets like "Bolt Takes On The Twitterati!"

#AskBolt was a Fukushima-scale social media disaster.

There's no way around it. Even people who had previously used the #AskBolt hashtag to say hello to the incredible sprinter Usain Bolt joined in when they discovered some idiot from Australia  had hijacked their hero's hashtag.

#AskBolt made Andrew Bolt a Twitter pinnata. People who had never even heard of this goose from down under were weeping with laughter at the constant stream of 98% inane, and more the point, non-abusive, tweets that swept #AskBolt into the Top Trending Topics in a host of countries around the world.

Nobody on Twitter had seen anything like it.

For the love of FailWhale, you don't hijack established hashtags. Particularly when you don't use Twitter in the first place.

Mindblowing. What the hell were they thinking?

But Andrew Bolt knows what's going on.

It was all a big Australian Labor Conspiracy.

Really. Hard Leftists, you see, control the Twitternets.

Bolt also seems completely unaware that the Daily Telegraph tried to promote #AskBolt on Facebook as well. Hundreds of people mocked him in commemts and shares. Whether the Daily Telegraph Facebook moderator was laughing too hard to delete any, or whether nobody actually moderates the page, who knows? But the ridicule came thick and fast there, too.

Andrew Bolt doesn't use Facebook either.

 


Hard Leftists control Facebook, too, presumably.

Here he is having a spit after discovering just how much of a social media disaster, and wider public spectacle, #AskBot was becoming.



This is how he reported on himself in the Herald Sun:



Just fantastic the way the link for tweeting Andrew Bolt's column onto Twitter lines up perfectly with this:

"I took a dip in Twitter this week, and understand even better how Labor got flushed away in a sewer of hate.

"How could Labor - and many journalists - disastrously mistake Twitter for the real world?"

The real world, you see, isn't millions of people in more than 100 hundred countries around the world communicating freely and sharing information, ideas and quality knowledge, without paywalls.

The Raal World, apparently, is Andrew Bolt's BlogWorld, where you have to register to "join in the debate" and where he bans commenters who hit to close the bone.

"(#AskBolt) electrified the Twittersphere. For hours the topic trended as Leftists, many anonymous, competed to ask me - the Great Satan of Conservatism - the worst, silliest or most abusive questions on the #askbolt hashtag.

"Fairfax newspapers thought this was sensational news."

It wasn't sensational, but it was idiotic enough a move to warrant media attention.

After all, Andrew Bolt is constantly demanding the rest of the media and the general Australian public pay attention to him, and exercise their right to free speech.

Clearly Bolt now has his limits, on both

"Gosh, hold the presses. No, wait, they're slowing already at Fairfax and no wonder, if recycling playground taunts by anonymous tweeters now passes for news reporting."

Miaow. Poor Andrew. He doesn't even know Murdoch's newspaper operation has lost more recently than Fairfax.

"In fact, to be attacked on Twitter is no news to a conservative.

"Twitter skews hard to the Left..."

 Twitter refused to take him seriously. 

"Twitter also seems to bring out the worst in users."

 Twitter isn't a bubble.

"Maybe it's the relative youth of tweeters, and the anonymity of many. Maybe it's because hate tends to sell best in the look-at-me Twittersphere."

He has his own TV show. About His Opinions.

"Or maybe it's because Twitter appeals to the impulsive sensation junkies eager to instantly broadcast their most idle thought..."

This a person who has often published more than a dozen blog posts in a single day.

Now onto the Great Australian Labor Twitter Conspiracy.

"But here's the bizarre thing: this is the audience Labor thought could save it.

"This is the crowd Prime Minister Kevin Rudd tried to impress by tweeting a picture of his shaving cut to his 1.4 million followers, thus confusing the magpie attention of tweeters with respect from very real and unimpressed voters.

"But Julia Gillard as prime minister had an even more fatal attraction to Twitter.

"Her infamous misogyny speech last year - falsely branding Abbott a woman-hater - was rightly seen at first by most commentators as a hate-filled rant that would appal many Australians."

What was Bolt saying before about people ranting like arseholes?

"But Gillard's communications director, John McTernan, eventually convinced press gallery journalists it was a success because it had gone viral on social media, including Twitter."

Gillard's speech was viewed by millions across the planet, within days. A political speech. Viewed by millions. That wasn't JFK, Obama or MLK.

That's pretty fucking viral. 

"And so Gillard, convinced by tweets and blog posts, doubled down on her politics of division, pitting women against men, workers against bosses."

Oh Twitter, is there nothing you can't do?

"Stirring hatred may indeed light up the Twittersphere but it makes the world outside your window feel sick."

Eh?

"But it's no surprise if Twitter's culture has spilled out of the internet sewers and now floods media offices.

"No surprise, when Channel 10's Paul Bongiorno retweets Mike Carlton who retweets Rudd's daughter, Jessica, who retweets Channel 10's Charlie Pickering who retweets blogger Mia Freedman who retweets the ABC's Leigh Sales who retweets her boss, Mark Scott, who retweets his presenter, Jonathan Green, who retweets John McTernan who retweets the ABC's Mark Colvin who retweets Marieke Hardy who retweets Mike Carlton who . . .

"And on it flows, a steady stream of hate, flushing the feckless with it. Labor, too."

Andrew Bolt doesn't mention, of course, the numerous automated Twitter accounts operated by NewsCorp retweeting his every blog post intro, around the clock.

You see, mere mortal journalists have to tweet links to their own stories themselves, and try and get people to read their work. Pumping their stories on social media is expected of almost every working journalist today.

But not the Mighty Bolt.

He wouldn't lower himself to using Twitter.

He has others to do it for him.

One of the last of Murdoch's protected species.

 
And just because it's funny, here's Bolt flipping out at others doing what he does almost daily, taking someone's gaffe or misspeak and using it over and over and over again.



He's just so precious.

ENCORE: Andrew Bolt didn't always think Twitter was a sewer. When Rupert Murdoch dived into Twitter, Bolt called it the "coolest new medium."

This Is What It Sounds Like, When A Blog Dies

A few weeks ago, Andrew Bolt let slip on his blog, a preview of future Bolt Blog plans:

"I don’t want to waste your time. I apologise, but all media outlets are now under severe pressure, and we cannot keep offering what’s essentially a free service. Should you have better suggestions, feel free to let the paper know."

Andrew Bolt deleted the above a few hours after posting it.

Bolt was the first of the Murdoch stable to hit his readers up for subscriptions and paywall ladders, and it was a complete disaster. Nobody wanted to pay to read online. Nobody.

Now, quite the opposite to executive-stacked newspapers and TV news room, small independent media in Australia is actually doing OK. It's the ones that have to kick up a few million a year to The Boss and all his executive buddies that are in the deepest shit.

Small, lean, fast digital news rooms (no office, no execs, no physical product) are the future, of course, it just took the likes of Murdoch, and Bolt, a lot longer than digital natives to understand.

Andrew Bolt Is A Convicted Racist

By Darryl Mason

A headline on the front page of the Herald Sun online invites you to read Andrew Bolt's latest column :



Except the link doesn't take you to Andrew Bolt's latest column, it takes you to this Herald Sun news story :

Minister rejects call to alter race laws

by Staff Writer

Justice Minister Brendan O'Connor has rejected Coalition calls to alter racial discrimination laws after the Andrew Bolt case.

Last week shadow attorney-general George Brandis said the laws were flawed and should be altered because they could impinge on freedom of expression. 

He made the comments after Herald Sun columnist Andrew Bolt was found to have breached the Racial Discrimination Act in two columns about light-skinned Aborigines. 

Mr O'Connor told the ABC's Insiders program he had a different interpretation to Mr Brandis. 

"I think the conclusion that one would draw from reading the judgment is that this was an issue about ... omitting quite relevant facts," Mr O'Connor said.

Maybe Herald Sun editors have finally had enough of Bolt's bullshit as well.

Or perhaps not.

The full O'Conner quote the last paragraph of the story was drawn from :

But I think the judgment should be read by people and read properly, because I think we don't want to see people racially vilified and I think the conclusion that one would draw from reading the judgment is that this was an issue about not sticking to some facts, or in fact omitting quite relevant facts, which I think led the respondent to be in some difficulty with the articles that he wrote.

More from O'Connor :

There's no doubt that if you're going to attribute improper motives about someone, you should get your facts right. And in terms of any chilling effect that's supposed to have happened as a result of the decision, I've seen more of Andrew Bolt since the decision on the front pages of the largest circulated papers, even during footy week.

That's no exaggeration. Via Pure Poison :



Imagine being a Herald Sun journalist and having your front page story bumped to make way for that heaping pile of absolute absurdity? This is why there is much grumbling amongst Murdoch journalists and editors at their city papers right now. They find Andrew Bolt to be an embarrassment and a growing stain on their craft and their credibility.

It's very simple. Andrew Bolt knew claiming people raised as Aboriginals were pretending to be Aborigines for profit and personal gain would probably lead to legal action. He wanted this lawsuit. He wanted to be a martyr. And, apparently, Herald Sun lawyers didn't mind either. How else to explain why they let him publish two columns filled with flat-out lies, not merely deceptive language, nearly all of it unreliably sourced?

The Age explains the facts under this headline :



The question mark is superfluous :

Andrew Bolt conceded he made errors in two columns found to be unlawful under the Racial Discrimination Act last week but claimed that ''none seemed to me to be of consequence''. Justice Mordecai Bromberg disagreed, finding Bolt's writings were ''grossly incorrect'', and contained ''significant distortion of the facts''. This was critical to why his defence failed. Here is a sample:

 BOLT: ''For many of these fair Aborigines, the choice to be Aboriginal can be considered almost arbitrary and intensely political, given how many of their ancestors are in fact Caucasian.''

BROMBERG: ''In relation to most of the individuals concerned, the assertion in the newspaper articles that the people dealt with chose to identify as Aboriginal have been substantially proven to be untrue. Nine of the 18 named … gave evidence. Each of them had been raised to identify as Aboriginal and had identified as such since childhood. None of them made a conscious or deliberate choice to identify as Aboriginal.''
BOLT: ''[Associate Professor Anita] Heiss … won plum jobs reserved for Aborigines at Koori Radio, the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Arts Board and Macquarie University's Warawara Department of Indigenous Studies.''
BROMBERG: ''Each of those assertions was erroneous. Mr Bolt accepted that they were wrong because they were exaggerated. One of the positions that Mr Bolt claimed Ms Heiss had won as a 'plum job' was a voluntary unpaid position. The other two positions were not reserved for Aboriginal people but were positions for which Aboriginal people were encouraged to apply.''

BOLT: ''[Ms] Eatock only started to identify as Aboriginal when she was 19, after attending a political rally.''
BROMBERG: ''This statement is untrue. Ms Eatock recognised herself to be an Aboriginal person from when she was eight years old whilst still at school and did not do so for political reasons.''
BOLT: ''Acclaimed St Kilda artist Bindi Cole… was raised by her English-Jewish mother yet calls herself 'Aboriginal but white'.''
BROMBERG: ''That statement is factually inaccurate because Ms Cole's Aboriginal grandmother also raised Ms Cole and was highly influential in Ms Cole's identification as an Aboriginal.''
BOLT: ''The very pale Professor Larissa Behrendt, who may have been raised by her white mother but today, as a professional Aborigine, is chairman of our biggest taxpayer-funded Aboriginal television service.''
BROMBERG: ''The factual assertions made were erroneous. Professor Behrendt's Aboriginal father did not separate from her mother until Professor Behrendt was about 15 years old. Her father was always part of the family during her upbringing, even after that separation.''
BOLT: ''Larissa Behrendt has also worked as a professional Aborigine ever since leaving Harvard Law School, despite looking almost as German as her father … But which people are 'yours', exactly, mein liebchen? And isn't it bizarre to demand laws to give you more rights as a white Aborigine than your own white dad?''
BROMBERG: ''To her knowledge, there is no German descent on either her father or mother's side of the family although she assumes that because of her father's Germanic surname, there may have been some German descent.
Her paternal grandfather came to Australia from England. Mr Bolt also referred to her father as being white. Her father had dark skin.''
BOLT: ''Take the most prominent Yorta Yorta leaders - Melbourne University academic Wayne Atkinson and Victorian Traditional Owners Land Justice Group co-chair Graham Atkinson. Both are Aboriginal because their Indian great-grandfather married a part-Aboriginal woman.
''How can Graham Atkinson be co-chair of the Victorian Traditional Owners Land Justice Group when his right to call himself Aboriginal rests on little more than the fact that his Indian great-grandfather married a part-Aboriginal woman?''
BROMBERG: ''The facts given by Mr Bolt and the comment made upon them are grossly incorrect. The Atkinsons' parents are both Aboriginal as are all four of their grandparents and all of their great grandparents other than one who is the Indian great-grandfather that Mr Bolt referred to in the article.''

I used to call Andrew Bolt The Professional Idiot. But he isn't. His almost 100% negative columns and blog posts about Indigenous people and his obsession with demanding people embrace 'white culture' and for them to give thanks for what he believes is a European improvement on 60,000 plus years of successful land management and survival is much worse than mere idiocy. What he did was calculated and conniving.

And just plain sick.

It's a stain on Australian journalism, and an unfortunate fallout for all journalists and editors at Murdochs News Limited, many of whom now find themselves shuddering whenever their friends say the name "Andrew Bolt" in their company.

How does Andrew Bolt keep his job? He delivers what Rupert Murdoch requires in Australia: the maintaining of racist beliefs and attitudes, xenophobia, white nationalism, fear your neighbours suspicion. The controversy of Bolt's might sell a few extra papers, but the real satisfaction for Rupert Murdoch is seeing what he can do to the country, the chaos, misery and pain he can inflict from New York City. He doesn't even have to fly in to do it. His thugs and goons know how to please him.

Andrew Bolt's Reality Meltdown Over Fukushima

Weird Scenes Inside The Murdoch News Mines

By Darryl Mason

News Limited executive editor (does that mean he just gets a nicer chair?) Alan Howes explains how the Murdoch tabloids act as "the watchdog" of modern politics (Headline : Taking A Rude Joy In Kicking The Watchdog) in this lovely piece of corporate propaganda, distributed widely, of course, across the Digital Rupert media landscape :

NEWSPAPERS easily make friends and enemies.

The friends are mostly readers, and mostly voiceless, but for the role a newspaper can play in representing their interests. The enemies are almost always powerful.

A key function of a thinking newspaper, like ours, is to snap at the heels of our elected governments and their appointed officials.

Yeah, woof woof, we get it.

That puts you onside with readers - whose only chance of directly expressing an opinion might come every election.

Unless they can write letters, protest, stage boycotts, type in comments on a multitude of news blogs and 'comment now' news stories, make phone calls to radio stations begging for talkbackers to call in, attend local political events where politicians are present, or use Twitter, Facebook and e-mail. Just how many housebound, illiterate readers with no access to modern communications or electricity do Murdoch tabloids have?

Alan Howe is one of those believers in The Right To Know. Except when it comes to knowing too much about the Murdoch media.

More than a few of them have been calling for an inquiry into Australia's media. If that threat sounds familiar, it should: We had the Norris Inquiry in 1981, a Working Party into Print Media Ownership in 1990 and, later, the Print Media Inquiry that spanned two years.

There's only been three inquiries into the Australian media in three decades? Only three? Is that all?

Perhaps Alan Howe is quietly terrified that many of his newspapers' readers would like to see the 2012 media inquiry televised, like the WaterGate hearings, particularly if a string of Australian celebrities and former politicians are willing to speak out on how their privacy was violated.

And to prove that the biggest bitches in the media have, in fact, always been male tabloid newspaper editors, Alan Howe takes on his critics :

Victorian Labor backbencher Steve Gibbons (who is he?)...

...dangerously thoughtless Greens Senator Christine Milne...

We should all be concerned about thoughtless dangerousness, too.

... NSW Labor MP John Murphy (doesn't ring a bell)

Oh, snap Alan. You nasty.

And of former Murdoch-league media mogul and competitor Conrad Black, News Limited executive editor Alan Howe has this to say :

Ironically, sodomy is no doubt often on the menu at Florida's Coleman Correctional Complex, where (Conrad Black) returns next month to serve out the rest of his sentence for fraud and obstruction of justice.

Prison rape is what Murdoch critics deserve, apparently.

Anyway, watchdogs.

Two of Australia's keenest Murdoch tabloid watchdogs gleefully discuss the new hairstyle of the former NSW premier :






Andrew Bolt :

Letting her hair down in Opposition. Well, letting someone’s hair down.

As they say, me-ow.

Just form a knitting circle or something.

I think I just found the front cover image for my book on Andrew Bolt :

Andrew Bolt's Reality Meltdown

By Darryl Mason


Screengrab from The Australian online front page in the days following the March 11 Japanese earthquake and tsunami

How many times can pro-nuclear wacko and alleged journalist Andrew Bolt show himself to be grotesquely ignorant, wrong and ill-informed in the space of just one week? Five times? Ten times? More?

Following the March 11 earthquake in Japan, a 15 metre high tsunami wave slammed into a nuclear plant in Fukushima. The earthquake and tsunami killed more than 28,000 people.

For obvious reasons there was widespread concern in Japan, and around the world, about how good a job the Japanese government and the nuclear plant's operators were doing in containing radiation leaking from the smashed plant.

As a sign of just how confident the US government was that the Japanese government could contain radiation from the Fukushima plant, they began preparations for the evacuation of thousands of US military families within hours of the US government learning just how huge and potentially deadly the unfolding disaster actually was.

And, not unexpectedly, news media leaped on the 'Nuclear Crisis' story and ran with it hard, voicing arguments both for and against nuclear power.

This gave Andrew Bolt the opportunity to blame The Greens for nuclear "scaremongering" and to attack "the media" (of which he is one of Australia's most prominent and highly paid) for their coverage.

Well, attack some media.

Attack, primarily, the main newspaper competition to the newspapers owned by ex-Australian Rupert Murdoch that publish Andrew Bolt's often incoherent and poorly researched swill.

Bolt began his ill-fated campaign to bludgeon his ideological and political enemies for "fear-mongering" over Fukushima on March 14 :

"...the offensive media fear-mongering..."

"...the media coverage of some papers obsesses instead about trouble at some nuclear reactors..."

This was the only time Bolt linked to Australian newspapers he claimed were over-hyping the radioactive threat posed by the rapidly failing Fukushima nuclear plant. He didn't link to anything published in the newspapers he writes for, of course, because that would have proven what a deceitful idiot he is.

The stories from The Age and the Sydney Morning Herald Bolt did link to were, in fact, mild and quite low on undue hype and "fear-mongering", in stark contrast, that is, to the newspapers Andrew Bolt works for.






Here's the online front pages from the Bolt-publishing Daily Telegraph & Herald Sun the day before those Age & SMH stories were published.





Even more bizarrely, Andrew Bolt ran this headline on his blog...



....the day after his Herald Sun newspaper ran this front page :



Which proves Bolt doesn't even read the front pages of the main newspaper he writes for, because nowhere, in a week of blog postings, did he acknowledge it was the actually the Herald Sun shouting 'Meltdown'.

Here's more excerpts from Andrew Bolt's blogs & columns in the 10 days following the start of the Fukushima nuclear disaster, interspersed with online & print front pages from the Daily Telegraph, the Herald Sun and other Murdoch news media, including The Australian, published during the same period.

Bolt neither linked to nor mentioned any of these in any of his columns or blog posts.

March 15 :

The great green scaremongering gets worse.

March 16 :

No, there won’t be a nuclear explosion, “China syndrome” or “another Chernobyl”. The situation today is better than yesterday, and as each day goes by the chances of a big accident lesson. The nuclear fuel remains contained.

This scaremongering over the crippled Fukushima nuclear complex is extraordinary.

Isn't it though?



March 18 :

We will need to make some people accountable for this monstrous scaremongering once the truth becomes undeniable

March 19 :

The fear of Fukushima is deadlier than the fallout

Utter madness. The journalists who have whipped this up should be ashamed of themselves.

These journalists?



March 20 :

The wild reporting of Japan’s Fukushima nuclear emergency continues, with lurid claims of radioactive plumes, poisoned milk and more. The fact remains, though, that no one has been killed and probably never will.

March 21 :

no one in the towns around the plant is in any danger whatsoever from the radiation.

...the screaming, braying, lying, hyperventilating, fabricating, panicking media coverage is probably likely to kill you first instead.

March 21 :

It’s time to hold the scaremongers to account.

These "scaremongers?"



Andrew Bolt, March 22 :

Why worry only about the reactor that has killed no one?

Yes, why worry about a mostly destroyed, exploding, radioactive water spewing nuclear plant when you can, if you read Murdoch news media, worry instead about whether or not Mother Nature is now purposely trying to kill humans?



Her cruelty, eh?

March 11 wasn't, you see, another one of the hundreds of mega-earthquakes and tsunamis that have rocked, smashed and swept across the fault-line islands we now call Japan in the past few dozen million years.....it was instead a Terror Attack on humans by 'cruel' Mother Nature, at least according to the Gold Coast Bulletin :



None of the above headlines or front pages were criticised, or even mentioned, by Andrew Bolt is his 10 day campaign to blame "fear-mongering" over the deadly serious, ongoing nuclear disaster in Japan on "the greens" and non-Murdoch news media.

Not one.

And since it has been confirmed that explosions at Fukushima did indeed claim lives, that vast farming areas of Japan are so polluted with radiation they can't grow essential crops like rice, perhaps for years, or decades, and that radioactive water gushing into the Pacific Ocean from the nuclear plant has destroyed lifeblood fishing industries and clouds of radiation have even reached milk and food supplies in the United States, what has Andrew Bolt said?

Nothing.

As soon as Andrew Bolt realised facts and reality had proven him wrong, deceitfully wrong, about Fukushima, over and over again, he simply dropped the story.

Completely.

Like a petulant child who, once told he is wrong, runs to his room and slams the door on the reality of his mistakes.

Bolt has said nothing, not even an update or a correction, about the true scale of the Fukushima nuclear disaster in weeks.

Meanwhile, in the real world, the Fukushima disaster has been upgraded to a Level 7 nuclear emergency, the same rating as Chernobyl, the highest rating possible.

Quality journalism indeed.

There Is No Good Outcome For Fukushima Disaster

Your New Reality - Mother Nature : The Ultimate Terrorist



Darryl Mason is the author of the free, online novel ED Day : Dead Sydney. You can read it here


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Professional idiot Andrew Bolt sees this photo of Prime Minister Julia Gillard and US President Barack Obama having fun in the West Wing...



and smells some kind of conspiracy! Or at the minimum, something suspiciously amiss :

Bolt : What an incredible coincidence, that a photographer was there to witness Julia Gillard kick a footy in the White House with Barack Obama.

Yes, what an incredible coincidence that the official White House photographer Pete Souza happened to be doing his job at the same time the leader of one of the United States' closest allies paid a visit to the White House.

Here's another Souza photo from the official White House photos & video site. It was so hard to find it was the first photo I saw when I visited the page :



Fact-checking, like spell-checking, has never been a priority for Bolt in his rush to get out his latest conspiracy soaked rantings, or yet another frothing demand for whoever happens to be prime minister to quit.

Interesting, though, that in all his daily blatherings about a carbon tax, Bolt doesn't mention that he works in a 'carbon neutral' News Limited workplace, and never discusses how much money his boss Rupert Murdoch is likely to save when carbon tax & trading for Australian businesses become a reality.

As ex-Australian citizen Murdoch's newspaper circulations plummet across the country and his dreams to get people to pay money to read his digital news sites fall apart, the tax benefits of running a carbon neutral corporation in a carbon currency economy will help pay all kinds of bills and keep wealthy non-stop whiners and intolerance spreaders like Bolt in paid employment.

But despite the hypocrisy, and deception, Bolt will keep railing against a carbon tax, knowing all the while that even if the Liberals were in federal power they, too, would be bringing one in, because that's what his readers want, and he has to keep those readers well pleased, and coming back, because Rupert still wants News Limited bloggers like him to convince their readers to hand over cash for iPad & iPhone apps instead of reading for free.

Good luck with that.

Even the most psychotically pro-war conservatives now admit that civilian massacres by NATO, and NATO-allied troops, in Afghanistan are anything but legal.

FireBomb Democracy

Today on Andrew Bolt's blog of fevered hate and intolerance, an open, uncensored call to commit acts of terrorism in Australia from a regular commenter :

"...it's always the darkest before dawn, and the people will have the ultimate voice - molotov cocktails into the Parliament Houses. We WILL regain control of the nation."

Let me guess, it slipped by the moderators, eh?

The Herald Sun's and ABC Insider's Andrew Bolt suggested an act of terrorism could have helped then prime minister John Howard win the 2007 election :

"...something might yet turn up that will make us appreciate anew his vast experience and steadiness under fire...if there were to be another terrorist attack...(we could) admire his firmness in handling it."

Will he suggest the same for Tony Abbott now?

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Enough Is Enough

Even Murdoch columnist Andrew Bolt, who gets free trips to Israel and then 'forgets' to mention so in a Daily Telegraph column where he recited IDF propaganda about the Gaza Flotilla slaughter without question, apparently has had enough of Israel's cruel, internationally condemned trade blockade of 1.5 million Palestinians :




Michael Rivero, who often links 2 or 3 times a week to Andrew Bolt articles on his popular website What Really Happened (contributing greatly to Bolt's claimed "2 Million Hits A Month!"), appears to agree with Bolt in this letter to the New York Times (excerpts) :

While I share the world’s revulsion at Israel’s attack on an unarmed aid flotilla in international waters I take strong exception to the comment made by the authors of this piece in the third paragraph. HAMAS did not stage a coup d’état against the Palestinian authority. HAMAS won the elections, and it was FATAH that tried to forcibly remove HAMAS, but failed.

An official Israel government documented reported by McClatchy news only yesterday confirms that the purpose of the blockade is not Israel’s defense, but to force the Gazans to surrender their elected government and accept Israeli rule via their proxy Fatah. That the list of items banned by Israel in Gaza included potato chips, shaving cream, candy and cookies demonstrates that defense is not the issue here. Israel’s attempt to coerce acceptance of alternate government in Gaza is a mirror of the attempt by the USSR in 1948 and 1949 to blockade West Berlin in order to starve that city into accepting Soviet rule via their proxy East Germany.

The world reacted quite differently back then, mounting the Berlin airlift, flying 13,000 tons of food and necessities into West Berlin daily on the principle that no government has a right to starve another people into changing their political system.

Hey Boltadamus! Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is!

By Darryl Mason

Murdoch tabloid journalist, and Liberal Party Yoda, Andrew Bolt, likes to praise himself when his predictions about Australian politics come true.

He would appear to have a pretty good track record, but it's an illusion.

Bolt makes dozen of predictions a month, so obviously there's a good chance that one or two of them might come true, months or years later.

Here's Andrew Bolt's latest prediction :

My tip is that Rudd is now finished and will be replaced. I’m guessing this could even occur within four weeks

I will bet Andrew Bolt $1000, to the charity of his choice, that prime minister Kevin Rudd will neither quit nor be overthrown by colleagues by June 28.

Will Andrew Bolt take the bet?

Will he announce on his radio show and in his blog that he is so confident in his prediction of Rudd's imminent political demise that he is willing to wager $1000 that Rudd will be gone inside four weeks from today?

No, he won't.

But I wait to be pleasantly surprised.

My own ability to Nostradamus Australian political tremors and earthquakes is, however, disturbingly accurate (kind of) or simply downright obvious (more likely). Here's a bunch of predictions I made before the 2007 Federal Election :

Labor Wins By Five Seats

Howard Loses Bennelong

Liberals Retain Wentworth

Greens Nail 14% Of National Vote

John Howard Brutalised In Media By Liberal Party Colleagues For Losing Election

Peter Costello Announces Retirement

Tony Abbott Announces Retirement

Malcolm Turnbull Fights For Liberal Leadership Against Demented Far Right

John Howard Embarks On $100,000 Per Speech Tour Of American NeoCon Think Tanks

Liberal Party Fractures, Descends Into Savage Infighting

Shelf Full Of New Books Reveal Dark Secrets Behind John Howard's Years As Prime Minister

John Howard To Score Knighthood From Queen

The Shape Of Rudd's 'New Labor Conservatism' Comes Into Focus - Lefties Grow More Nervous By The Day About Future

Peter Garrett Quits Politics, Rejoins Midnight Oil To Fight Rudd's Pro-Logging, Pro-Nuclear New Labor

Philip Ruddock Quits Politics To Take On Role As Mr Burns In Non-Animated Simpsons Movie

Obviously a couple of those were jokes, but I'm totally disappointed Fox never went ahead with the live action movie of The Simpsons. Ruddock would have been absolutely brilliant as Mr Burns.

You can e-mail Andrew Bolt here - bolta@heraldsun.com.au - and challenge him to accept my wager.


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Andrew Bolt, a regular guest of ABC's Insiders :

Islam, after all, is a faith that preaches rejection and subjugation of non-believers...

...doesn't sound like he's been to a mosque recently.

....and is thus likely, at least in theory, to inhibit assimilation and a sense of communal responsibility towards other Australians.

You get the feeling sometimes he's incredibly disappointed Muslim youth haven't tried to suicide bomb our trains or buses. If they had, just once, he wouldn't have to spend so much time clinging desperately to so many self-constructed straw men.

Why do Australian male conservative commentators hate on female politicians when they glam up, but fawn over the perpetually nearly-nude Tony Abbott?

For non-Australian readers, this is Kate Ellis, Federal Minister for Youth & Sport.

The Herald Sun's Andrew Bolt on Ellis : "thick head."

The Daily Telegraph's Tim Blair on Ellis : "She looks like an East German gymnast"

Maybe they prefer their politicians in high heels to look like this instead?

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