Andrew Bolt has left his readers that cryptic message, and little else today. Gone is yesterday’s post where he quoted at length from Glenn Milne’s article that had been pulled from The Australian. Gone too is the post from Saturday that said:
On Monday, I’m tipping, a witness with a statutory declaration will come forward and implicate Julia Gillard directly in another scandal…
It’s all a bit reminiscent of the time that Andrew suddenly turned off comments on his blog after they brought him some unwanted attention. But whether things will return to ‘normal’ at the Southbank Jester’s blog is something that we’ll have to wait to find out.
Update: After a dozen or so hours of weighing up principles and keeping the faith, Andrew has announced that he’ll fill us all in tomorrow. I’m sure that everyone is as relieved as I am.
132 Comments
Pages: « 1 2 [3] Show All
I wonder … is it safe to speculate what might happen if somebody made a similar sort of allegation about milne or bolt? How long might it take for the phone to ring?
I mean … that’d be an interesting test of free speech, and various people’s commitment to it. If only it was safe to run that experiment. I can only gauge by published comments on this site and by other journalists, but I fear that might be a very costly experiment indeed.
MoC,
Yes, and it gets worse. If you listen further he goes into the “poor me” “I’m so depressed about freedom of speech” schtick. Says Craig Thomson’s a great bloke. It gets truly sickening. Repeatedly saying how “depressed” he is. That just belittles the people who genuinely suffer from it. He’s not depressed, he’s just pissed of he’s been growled out, like a small child.
Honestly, he really is pathetic. He dishes out vitriol constantly, he’s obviously been smacked on the bum for leaving the Milne extract up after the Oz took it down, now he cries victim and the sycophants fall to their knees wailing and gnashing their teeth about how they’ll miss him and how great he is. It all feeds is narcissism.
Is he the most self centred, deceitful, manipulative, narcissistic, vain, egotistical, needy, hypocritical excuse for a “journalist” who is basically only capable of writing intros to {EDIT} extracts of other peoples hard work with little or no skill at even the vaguest investigative or researched original work who {EDIT} his readers to provide subject matter for his daily excretions and deserves none of the influence or recognition he gets?
(No allegations are being made here. Questions are being asked which deserve an answer.)
Good to see so many of my dear friends here are such avid consumers of my favourite blogger.
Quite heartening really!
Are you sure trolling is the best use you can make of your time? Sad little man.
The right wing idea of freedom of speech = publishing lies and distortions
I wonder how many posters Over There who AREN’T just trying to offer their unquestioning support/denigration of andy feel about their submissions being ignored?
Something I’m going to be looking for tomorrow – how be balances criticising the ABC for devoting 40 minutes to david hicks (he can’t let THAT go, surely?) with complaining about his own attenuated right to say whatever he likes, endangering his (and everyone else’s … but mostly his) free speech.
gtpfb13 @101
The ideal disclaimer:
I don’t actually believe anything I just published – but it raises questions about, um, somebody’s judgement or maybe it paints a disturbing picture … or something
I’m getting the feeling that what happened here was a pre-emptive move by News Ltd to discredit any future inquiry into the media as a payback by Gillard. They staged the whole incident from beginning to end so that they could then start playing the victim card big time.
Hmmmm. I cannot imagine any sub editor in any newsroom sanctioning Milne’s story without referring it up the line first, especially as it referred to the subject having already been spiked by lawyers.
It would have had to have been approved well up the food chain. I may need a tin foil hat but this all smells of a set-up by NewsLtd to me, with more to come.
The thing that proves he is a sad little man is that the answer to your question is “Yes”. He has openly admitted he trolls here. There is no ambiguity about it when the perpetrator brags about it.
Accountability at News Corp is all lip service…ask our UK cousins!
It wouldn’t matter how many humble days Mr Murdoch has…he will continue to employ lying rodents and right wing scumbags because stupid people are easily made angry with misinformation.
It’s just business!
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/opinion/prime-ministers-hand-overplayed/story-e6frfifx-1226125924173
Unbelievable.
A media company known for the ease in which they become litigious are now demanding the outright ability to make knowingly false defamatory claims about public figures.
Goshome@103 makes a pretty compelling case. News run allegation about the PM they know to be false. When the PM responds they apologise and pull the article. They then have the ability to run the whole affair as a Government Censorship vs Media Free Speech story. The PM is now in a position where any further comment or pushback will be painted by News as further attempts to silence the media and prevent the people from hearing the truth.
They then have the ability to link it (as Bolt does) to calls for a media inquiry and criticism of News over phone-hacking to present the PM as having both a vendetta against News and an opposition to press freedom and free speech.
Everything in the Bolt’s column is highly suggestive of this being an orchestrated operation from the beginning. News have managed to develop a situation where they can simultaneously defame the PM, play the victim card run continued anti-Gillard commentary.
It is truly ingenious. And it surely puts to rest the suggestion that disgusting, duplicitous behavior from News is limited to a few UK employees.
I love the irony that his post that generated the most comments ever (according to the stats on his own blog), was the one where he had nothing to say at all! Sums up his blog and his followers rather nicely.
There will be no media inquiry.
Even though it would be politically popular. Even though we really do have a serious problem. Especially because the Greens would support it. And, finally, because it would be good for fixing our democracy.
Nup, not going to happen.
Our democracy is finished. All the ‘Lefties’ and ‘Conservatives’ gave it up and supped at the fountain of Rupert.
Shame Australia, such an excellent country of defiantly honest individuals once. Now totally sold out to the neo-con ideology.
Steve @110, I love the irony that his blog where he had nothing to say has started to generate probaly record comments right here at Pure Poison. The stats will go through the roof in the morning.
He just has that pulling power.
Sums up this blog and its followers rather nicely.
Jester: “Help, help, I’m being repressed!”
I blame the peasants.
Mr Bolt really does like attention, doesn’t he?
If The Southbank Jester gets the boot from News, would Gina be willing to fund a Blog for him? Seems that she may have wasted a whole bunch of money on the little TBS/Ch10 experiment. Maybe buy him a radio station?
We didn’t have to wait long for Andrew Bolt’s response
http://www.heraldsun.com.au/opinion/prime-ministers-hand-overplayed/story-e6frfifx-1226125924173
It is as I feared. Bolt is surely the reincarnation of Horatio Bottomley. It’s all there: the pomposity, the loud claims of censorship, the appeals to free speech. In this case, “free speech” means the inability to publish erroneous assertions about Julia Gillard without finding himself, quite rightly, in court for defamation.
OK, Bolt, if you’re so interested in free speech, publish those assertions. Or are you, as I suspect, a coward?
Response to this – Column – How Gillard tried to kill a story – over there:
Andrew Bolt really does need to learn that no one has the right to lie and that everyone, be they an ordinary citizen or the Prime Minister of Australia has the right to ensure that lies told about them are not passed off as truth.
Bolt’s suggestion that she “could have simply pointed out the errors and ridiculed the accusers as muckrakers” ignores the point that lies are very rarely defeated by facts. It also assumes that readers are silly enough to overlook the truth of what he’s trying to do, namely, smear the Prime Minister with a false accusation. Bolt is trying to find her guilty by association with a man whose actions, according to him (or the lawyers) she knew nothing about.
It is not “mean to suggest Gillard showed poor judgment in working for and having a relationship with a union boss who turned out to be a conman”; it is stupid, idiotic and ridiculous. Given that Wilson’s actions were “unknown to her” why would any sane, rational human being who possesses even the slightest conception of how time works and that hindsight is always 20/20 expect the Prime Minister to have made a judgement about Wilson’s behaviour based on facts that were not yet in evidence?
The sad truth of this saga is not the appearance of censorship on the part of the Prime Minister or the deceitfulness on the part of Glenn Milne, the appalling standard of journalism at The Australian or the hypocrisy of Andrew Bolt. The sad truth is Andrew appears to be little more than a lowlife grub, happy to wallow in sleaze and innuendo if he perceives an opportunity to damage his ideological opponents. There is absolutely nothing to the story. The Prime Minister has done nothing wrong, yet for some bizarre reason Andrew Bolt believes it’s his democratic right to use newspapers, radio and blogs to launder lies and pass them off as truth. How pathetic and shameful!
From Bushfire Bill at Poll Bludger:
Bootstrapping For Dummies, M. Franklin, D. Shanahan and G. Milne, 2003-2011, Fifth Edition.
Bootstrapping: Aims and Objectives #1 – “The Story Must Become The Story”
The negative bootstrapper should aim to progress his bootstrapping campaign to the point where the very existence of the campaign itself is sufficient to condemn the target’s character.
If the target cannot be attacked on any facts contained in the stories, by the time the campaign has reached multiple stories he or she can then be attacked simply on basis that there are too many stories.
These stories may go back for up to 30 years and need not contain facts, but it is helpful if there is at least a kernel of truth to aid in laundering any lies also contained in the stories.
* Bonus points are awarded for neatness, efficiency and circular justification if it is the bootstrapper himself who makes this claim based on previous stories he has written.
* Double-bonus points may be awarded (at the discretion of the editor) if the bootstrapper expresses regret that “it has come to this”.
* A gold star shall be bestowed upon any bootstrapper who indulges in a public mental struggle with his or her conscience and/or journalistic ethics in the days prior to the release of the judgement call on the target’s character.
* The bootstrapper may be honoured with a television talk show in his name if he admits the target did nothing wrong, but that this does not excuse the target from condemnation based on a negative character assessment the bootstrapper himself has carried out (Note: must be said with a straight face. No laughing. This cannot be emphasized enough)
* A follow-up campaign that day throughout the media (preferably radio shock jocks) discussing the stories in gasping tones is recommended.
Yet again, the irony of his concern about threats to free speech are published in a major newspaper (and I assume he gets paid as well). More strains if “Help, help, I’m being oppressed!”. Clearly, these people have never read or seen a country where free speech is truly under threat – not just from PMs ringing the CEO but real violence.
Caroline Overington has tweeted that Andrew Bolt said he might have quit, saddly he didn’t
“Throw enough mud and some of it will stick”
If he was really being “oppressed”, this morning’s column would have been pulled as well, surely? Isn’t he just restating the allegations that were repeated in Milne’s article?
Awful lot of reacharounds going on in the comments section of the jesters latest attack on Gillard.
Andrew holds himself up as a champion of free speech and yet he runs a blog that is increasingly heavily censored. Comments are either not posted or clumsily edited, changing their context.
The censorship, sorry, moderation on his blog is far more restrictive to freedom of speech than any other I comment on.
His support for freedom of speech should be without restriction. At present it’s obvious he’s only concerned about his own.
Deceitful hypocrisy.
Quite.
“He just has that pulling power.”
Did you just call someone a monumental wanker Col?
I called it all the way back at comment 8.
It’s an outrage that commentators can’t dredge up allegations they already admit are untrue to smear their political enemies who they also admit have done nothing wrong.
I’m not saying a certain somebody rolled D.B Cooper up in carpet and threw him off a bridge, but why won’t he answer the allegations?
Col@113, at the risk of feeding the troll, you should bring your arithmetic skills up to your cut and paste skills.
Alan @119,
Great response.
The mods over in Boltville seem to be letting a bit more through today. Might be worth trying to post a version over there. See what response it gets.
Also worth cross posting this in the thread just put up here.
Because you know how much we care what you think Col
Tinfoil hat, or full body armour, how can it NOT be that this is deliberate policy by Mudorc’s minions? Having failed with tendentious mendacity in the ‘news’ pages, outright lies in the columnists’ monopinions and ignoring facts, the new strategy is to put out the story, immediately withdraw it and rely on general ignorance, aware of how a ‘meme’ works.
Just as they did with the GFC handling, BER & pink bats – no matter how many enquiries, figures & facts prove these to have been well done and fit for purpose, they are used as pejoratives by rightards.
It was a stroke of evil genius that has resulted it the shoutback jocks calling it censorship and alluding to dictators closing newspapers.
One wonders what was discussed, a couple of weeks back, when the PM went to the OO’s HQ(why? to plead? do obeisance? say she was just joshing for public consumption with talk of ‘questions to be answered”?). No leaks on that. So far.
The 4 Corners on Mudorc’s deep infiltration & corruption of the British police & political systems was very distressing and there are still independent papers there!
Poor bugger my country.
Pages: « 1 2 [3] Show All