ABC Apologises To Andrew Bolt

[icyfroth]

The ABC has apologised to News Corp commentator Andrew Bolt after a Q&A panellist accused him of "racial abuse".

In a discussion about racial discrimination laws last Monday night, indigenous academic Marcia Langton accused Bolt of heaping "foul abuse" on indigenous woman Misty Jenkins, forcing her to withdraw from public life.

Her comments stemmed from newspaper articles Bolt wrote that questioned whether "fair-skinned" people who identified as Aboriginal, such as Ms Jenkins, had exploited their ancestry to make political or career gains.

"Nothing that he said about her was political. It was simply racial abuse," Professor Langton said on the program.

"He argued that she had no right to claim that she was Aboriginal and, like most fools who put this argument in public, we are expected to deny our parents and our grandparents because somebody believes in race theories."

Bolt wrote in a blog that he was "devastated" by the comments.

Professor Langton later apologised to Bolt in an interview with him and broadcaster Steve Price on 2GB, saying that although she does not think Bolt is racist, "he's playing with racist ideas — he goes too far to the line".

Bolt published a transcript of the interview in his blog and called on the ABC to respond.

Last night on Q&A the ABC issued an apology through host Tony Jones, who said that Professor Langton had publicly apologised "so as a result the ABC also apologises for broadcasting her remarks".

But the apology was not enough for Bolt who said it "did not go far enough".

The columnist criticised the apology for "failing to include a specific acknowledgement that claims I'd subjected Dr Misty Jenkins to "foul abuse" and driven her from "public life" were utterly false. "

"But it is a start," Bolt said.

In September 2011 a Federal Court judge found that Bolt breached a section of the Racial Discrimination Act by writing newspaper opinion pieces about "fair-skinned" indigenous people.

The section, which the federal government has pledged to repeal, protects people from "offensive behaviour because of race, colour or national or ethnic origin."

The judge ruled the offending articles were not covered by the legal exemption for making fair comment in good faith, because they "contained errors of fact, distortions of the truth and inflammatory and provocative language".

From Here

God it's wonder Tony Jones didn't choke on that apology, lol.

Some interesting comments there down to the right.

[izabsmiling]

keep the 18C ...it may also save our Country from the damage our own Governent can do here and overseas 

Mark Textor an adviser to Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott has deleted his Twitteraccount @markatextor after employing the same boots and all approach to Australia-Indonesia relations as Abbott himself.

[izabsmiling]

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@icyfroth wrote:

People are very quick to play the racist card aren't they?

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In her comments Marcia Langton actually referred to Justice Bromberg’s judgement delivered in September 2011.

[The plaintiffs] Were reasonably likely, in all the circumstances, to have been offended, insulted, humiliated or intimidated by the imputations conveyed by the newspaper articles

— JUDGMENT, Bromberg J, Federal Court of Australia, Eatock v Bolt , 28th September, 2011

i.e. the conditions necessary for a finding that a racist act had been committed had been proven

http://theantibogan.wordpress.com/2011/10/01/nuts-come-out-after-the-truth-has-bolted/

Nuts come out after the truth has bolted

Posted on October 1, 2011

Mike Carlton 

The usual reactionaries have risen as one in defence of Andrew Bolt, the Melbourne columnist and village idiot, convicted on Wednesday for breaching the Racial Discrimination Act. An attack on freedom of speech, they howled. A dark day for democracy.

Since the verdict, Bolt himself has played the martyred victim, drenched in self-pity, a sickening spectacle.

His fellow Murdoch hack, Miranda Devine, invoked the spectre of Nazi concentration camps, thereby immediately losing the argument. The shadow attorney general, George Brandis, blathered about George Orwell’s 1984.

Most ludicrous of all, one Sinclair Davidson, a Melbourne economics professor and, predictably, a “Senior Fellow” at that sink of right wing propaganda, the Institute of Public Affairs, wants to scrap the law altogether and let “market forces” punish discrimination. This is not satire. He meant it.

http://theantibogan.wordpress.com/2011/10/01/nuts-come-out-after-the-truth-has-bolted/

the above is not my wording...it does show  how pathetic it all looks when the facts are there .

our Courts have found Andrew Bolt guilty of a crime ...he needs to grow up not tear up .

[tall_bearded]

I watched both the program and read the transcript, and in my opinion this is a clear cut case of foot in mouth.

During the program Langdon said the Bolt “had heaped foul abuse” onto aboriginal academic (Jenkins) by questioning her aboriginality because “The singling out of 'fair skinned' Aboriginal people goes to the issue of 'race' and could be construed as racist”.  She then went on to say that, as a result of this foul abuse Jenkins was forced to withdraw from public life.  These were the allegations publically made and publically withdrawn.

Now add the fact that Langdon is on the record as having said “she didn't think he (Bolt) as racist’. Instead "he's playing with racist ideas. He goes too far to the line".

.

[izabsmiling]

Is this the Dr Misty Jenkins ?

Dr Misty Jenkins

Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre, Melbourne

Related news items

When killing saves lives: our immune system at work

Dr Misty Jenkins spends a lot of her time watching killers at work: the white blood cells of the body that eliminate infected and cancerous cells.She can already tell you a great deal about how they develop into assassins and arm themselves.Now with the support of her L’Oréal For Women in Science Fellowship Misty is exploring how they become efficient serial killers—killing one cancer cell in minutes and moving on to hunt down others.Her work will give us a greater understanding of our immune system and open the way to better manage T cells to defeat disease.

Misty’s career so far has been quite a journey for a girl from Ballarat. Along the way she been mentored by Nobel Prize-winning immunologist Prof Peter Doherty and become the first Indigenous Australian to attend either Oxford or Cambridge. Now working with Prof Joe Trapani as a National Health and Medical Research Council  (NHMRC) postdoctoral fellow in the Cancer Cell Death laboratory at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in Melbourne, Misty has been awarded a $25,000 L’Oréal Australia and New Zealand For Women in Science Fellowship. She will use the money to further her study of what triggers T cells to detach themselves from their targets and seek additional prey.

From the time Misty first went to school, her mother—a Gunditjmara woman from Western Victoria—impressed on her the value of education in opening her horizons. So Misty became determined to go as far with it as she could, preferably in something to do with health—though not as a doctor, a career she thought would be boring. Her teachers at Mt Clear Secondary College only encouraged her. “I was nerdy and curious,” she says.

Initially that meant a life of evening jobs in bars and restaurants and living in share houses with rising damp, while during the day she undertook a Bachelor of Science majoring in microbiology and immunology at the University of Melbourne. After four years she found herself with a first class honours degree for a project involving tumour suppressors.

 http://www.scienceinpublic.com.au/loreal/2013-fellows/misty-jenkins

[tall_bearded]

Yes it is.

[i-need-a-martini]

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@tall_bearded wrote:

I watched both the program and read the transcript, and in my opinion this is a clear cut case of foot in mouth.

During the program Langdon said the Bolt “had heaped foul abuse” onto aboriginal academic (Jenkins) by questioning her aboriginality because “The singling out of 'fair skinned' Aboriginal people goes to the issue of 'race' and could be construed as racist”.  She then went on to say that, as a result of this foul abuse Jenkins was forced to withdraw from public life because she felt that her credentials were under scrutiny because Bolt made out that she had moved smoothly through the scientific and academic world due to her aboriginality.

These were the allegations publically made and publically withdrawn.

Now add the fact that Langdon is on the record as having said “she didn't think he (Bolt) as racist’. Instead "he's playing with racist ideas. He goes too far to the line".

.

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Wrong again tall-bearded.

Misty Jenkins was one of the women who brought the legal action against Bolt. She then had to endure more racial abuse from the public. She stopped speaking publically at womens events and science conferences. 

This was the (true) "allegation" that Langton made and she did not withdraw that allegation. In fact she has said again and again that she stands by her opinion - she simply apologised for offending Bolt.

[izabsmiling]

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@tall_bearded wrote:

Yes it is.

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What a winner she is 

She is a collegue of Marcia Langtons too from what I read .Marcia may have been very well aware of the impact Andrew Bolt's comments which lead to the judgement had on her collegue .

Andrew Bolt wants the tissues for HIS tears ....he is pathetic .

His style hasn't changed much either .

A decent person would acknowledge what he/she did was wrong and accept the Court's judgement 

and change their behaviour .

Not Bolt and his supporters (of which our PM is one)....they want to give that man a tissue and change our Laws so this man and other men/women like him can lawfully make other Misty's reach for the tissues whenever they please .

http://theantibogan.wordpress.com/2014/03/18/andrew-bolt-spits-the-dummy-takes-his-toys-and-goes-hom...

[i-need-a-martini]

Yes that is her. She addressed a group of students at the uni I was at a few years ago and she was brilliantly inspiring.

She grew up in a regional indigenous community where everyone left school at 15 due to poor opportunity. Her grandparents on her father side (I think) were traditional indigenous people and they were mixed on the the side of her other grandparents.

She has tremendous knowledge (and connection) to her indigenous lineage and has always supported indigenous students, in particular women. When I heard her talk it was with gratitude that an Indigenous scholarship allowed her to finish school and then to become one of the first people in her community to go to university. Without that scholarship she would still be living in the backwoods somewhere twiddling her thumbs. Instead she is a worldwide respected scientist who we should be proud of. All because of a scholarship. Is this what Bolt means when he says women like her shouldn't have been given a "free hand out"?

Yes she is blonde and blue eyed but so are many other indigenous people. I suppose when you see blonde haired blue eyed indigenous children swimming in a local watering hole, it is cute. But not so cute when they grow up huh?

[izabsmiling]

not all that long ago those blonde children would most likely be the first removed from their Indigenous families .

Sad that even now some want to take that away from them 

She is really inspiring Martini .

though Ballarat isn't a backwoods lol

[tall_bearded]

It appears that your interpretation of the record differs with mine.  So to be absolutely certain I replayed the relevant Q and A segment and that portion of her interview when she retacted and apologised, and my interpretation remains the same.

So it appears we’ll just have to agree to disagree.  That is of course until the court hands down it decision, because, as Langdon has now published a 5000 word ‘explanation’ as what she meant, this is where this issue appears to be headed.