Kipp and others write

'EG: Runner your Jesus and his Mother or Dad would not be happy with you, showing hatred towards their children!!

so telling the truth about muslim converts is hate. Yeah!

Point 1 Zac. The SMH is a pro multicultural rag which does not try to harm minorities.

Point 2. It is a fact that Muslims believe that killing a Muslim who converts to another religion is entirely justified.

Point 3. There are so many young Muslim females apparently committing suicide in Britain, that Scotland Yard is beginning to smell a rat. The police have stated publically that some of these "suicides" are honour killings by male family memebers who are outraged that a young female Muslim would want to live like a typical westerner.

point 4. Honour killings of females in Muslim countries is common and the perpetrators are unlikely to be prosecuted. Honour killings are also known to have occured with some frequency in western countries, one happened right here in my own home town of Parramatta.

To summarise, zac, the SMH printed a story based upon what was said by the apparently grieving husband of a missing woman, and that story was credible. If Muslims think that is unjust, they can stop believing that the murder of Muslim apostates is justified, stop committing these crimes, and their Imams and Mullahs must publically denounce any Muslim who commits one of these murders.

But they are not going to do that, are they Zac? And you and I know why. To think in a liberal way and to believe that females and apostates have rights is against the teachings of their non existent God.

Alan Austin, your understanding of the significance of the Bolt judgement is deficient, otherwise you would realise the passage you have quoted confirms my point about the subjectivity of the active criteria of the RDA; which is, an aggrieved party may seek redress by reference to itself.

This is anathema to equality before the law and the essential quality of the primacy of the reasonable community standard.

But not only do you miss this fundamental point you are also unaware that the Judge relies on the criteria of what is likely to influence those who are susceptible to the message of racism allegedly in the offending article. This is the essence of all censorship; namely that something should be prohibited because it is likely to influence, to community detriment, members of that community.

This is the weakest link argument and the irony is that while the Judge in the Bolt case abrogates community standards to initially determine an offence under the act he relies on the inverse of that community standard to bolster the weakness of the primary criteria of a non-community standard.

In short the judgement is a mess.

As for the factual errors, Bolt deals with that here:

http://blogs.news.com.au/heraldsun/andrewbolt/index.php/heraldsun/comments/more_reaction3/

A reasonable appraisal of this decision and its impact on society is by James Allan, a professor of law at the University of Queensland.

http://www.theaustralian.com.au/business/legal-affairs/andrew-bolt-decision-justifies-repeal-of-a-bad-statute/story-e6frg97x-1226152277397

Hi Cohenite,

We seem to be disagreeing about the reasons the judge found against Andrew Bolt. The link you provide claims “For simply expressing his opinion about the weird fluidity of modern-day identity politics, Bolt was found guilty of racial discrimination.”

But this is not true, is it? Bromberg discusses the issue of expression of opinion at great length, which is extremely interesting. But the problems he found with the two articles was not the offensive opinions therein, but the multiplicity of errors of fact, distortions of the truth and serious omissions.

In his discussion of Section 18D Bromberg specifically notes that exemption from action is available for “a fair and accurate report of any event or matter of public interest”. He makes it pretty clear that the action would not have succeeded had the articles been reasonably factually accurate.

I believe we should be free to express whatever opinion we hold, however racist or sexist or or bigotted or whatever. But we should not be free to fabricate lies, should we?

And no, the link to the Bolt blog does not “deal with” the factual errors, Cohenite. It defends just one of them. But there were more than twenty.

This is the essential problem not just with Mr Bolt, but with much of the opinion and reportage in the Murdoch media.

What about other publishers than the daily press? Do they have a similar duty of care to ensure accuracy and fairness? For example, what of traditional publishing houses that are responsible for producing the textbooks and reference works that inform our next generation of practitioners in various fields

The alleged errors of fact were always secondary to the primary reasons for the Judgement:

"The reasons for that conclusion have to do with the manner in which the articles were written, including that they contained errors of fact, distortions of the truth and inflammatory and provocative language." [paragraph 23]

The Judgement discussion of the errors of facts is at paragraphs 380-383; they seem slight.

Basically Bolt has been pinged because he is un-PC, a smart-a..e and writes as such