Quadrant? Hoaxed with a spoof contribution? How could anybody tell?

Assuming you heard about it, what was your reaction to the hoax which led to right-wing magazine Quadrant running an article containing nonsense?

• I enjoyed seeing editor Keith Windschuttle exposed as sloppy and/or biased
• It was an outrageous example of fraudulent journalism and an unethical attack on a staunch defender of Australian cultural values.
• Boring. Can't we move on to something interesting.

It's clear that most Australians, even if they heard of the hoax – revealed on Crikey.com by media commentator Margaret Simons last Tuesday and followed up by newspapers such as The Australian and The Sydney Morning Herald the next morning – just didn't care.

The story would have died in a day or two. But then hoaxer Katherine Wilson released Simons from a confidentiality promise and allowed Simons to publish her name – but not her phone number or address.

Wilson outed herself only after journalists from the Melbourne Age and The Australian, as well as some bloggers, had sniffed out her identity. The hoaxer was about to go into labour with her second child (not a hoax, Ms Simons assured us) and refused to talk to reporters or be photographed.

Whatever, the naming of Katherine Wilson gave the story extra legs, but it's dying fast. Probably all but a hundred thousand or so Australians would pick the third option – Boring!

Among those who did bother to comment, a surprising number would tick the second option. It seems they don't believe an editor has a responsibility to check on an author's credentials, show the copy to someone who understands the topic, or do some basic fact-checking which would have exposed the hoax.

They believe that if a story is well-written and reinforces their preconceptions, it should get a run. It's criminal fraud by the author if it turns out to be nonsense. Does that says something about Quadrant readers?

However, this Grumpy Old Journo would not hesitate to tick the first box – it's a pleasure to see Windschuttle get his comeuppance. In the past, the Grumpy Old Journo blog has listed some of Windschuttle's arguments which go against reasonable, unbiased interpretations.

A little digression: GOJ has just checked Wikipedia and (at 5pm Sydney time, January 9) finds somebody has already updated its entry on Windschuttle. Perhaps the Quadrant editor's foes almost tripped over one another in the rush. The entry now includes:

In January 2009, Windschuttle was tricked into publishing a hoax article in Quadrant magazine. An [sic] bogus author using the pseudonym "biotechnologist Dr Sharon Gould" submitted an article claiming that the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation had planned to produce food crops engineered with human genes. However, "Gould" revealed that s/he had regarded the article as an Alan Sokal style hoax. Windschuttle accused the online publication Crikey of being involved in the hoax, a claim which Crikey denied. Two days later, Crikey revealed that "Gould" was in fact the writer, editor and activist Katherine Wilson. Wilson agreed to being named by Crikey, as her name had already appeared in online speculation and it seemed likely that her identity was about to be revealed by other journalists.

Windschuttle has a first-class honours degree in history. He knows how to ferret through source material. But even a first-class degree does not guarantee the holder will interpret his sources reasonably.

For example, I cannot reconcile my reading of Surveyor-General John Septimus Roe's journal account of the 1834 “Battle of Pinjarra” skirmish south of Perth with the conclusions Windschuttle drew from the same pages.

In 2002, in the first volume of his The Fabrication of Aboriginal History, Windschuttle checked the references and footnotes of writers who argued that Aboriginal people were badly treated in the European settlement of Tasmania. He found many errors, many of them trivial. But they led to the conclusion that all such historical accounts were false.

Indeed, only two weeks after Windschuttle published that first volume, conservative newspaper columnist Miranda Devine – once a member of the Quadrant editorial committee – wrote that Windschuttle had refuted the black armband view of our history. Not just made a strong case against it, mind you, but refuted it.

Refute means to disprove. Do not say “Indonesia today refuted claims that . . . “ unless the context makes it clear that Indonesia has, in fact, disproved the claims. Use denied, rejected or rebutted. – from News Limited's 2001 Style book (which may be in error about rebutted, which I'd call a synonym for refuted).

Windschuttle is passionate in his defence of freedom of speech – when defending it against left-wing attackers. He has criticised the student protests against historian Geoffrey Blainey in Melbourne and pyschologist Hans Eysenck half a century ago in London.

Yet when director Dawn Casey's labels at the then-new National Museum upset the conservative commentariat, Windschuttle was in the pack baying to get rid of her.

They succeeded. Prime Minister John Howard initially extended her contract for just a year, then failed to renew it. The Quadrant mob may defend fellow conservatives' right to free speech but they show a glint of satisfaction when they get an opponent sacked. There's a word for people like that, but I'd better not say it.

In mid-2007 with Paddy McGuinness as editor, Quadrant had acknowleged we're right to worry about global warming, and that governments should be doing something about it. Under Windschuttle, Quadrant has again become a bible for deniers of man-made climate change.

So thanks, Katherine Wilson, you've brightened my week. Apart from that, you haven't achieved much.

When Australia voted Prime Minister John Howard out of office and out of parliament, they also signalled they were bored with tired old men peddling tired old ideas. Back when the Quadrant conservatives had duchessed Howard into adopting their ideas as policy, we were right to be concerned.

Today, Windschuttle and Quadrant are not worth worrying about. People are bored with them.

Only a few newspapers bothered to run the hoax yarn. In today's Sydney Morning Herald (the issue for January 10-11), acting letters editor Harriet Veitch listed the issues which fired up letter writers in the past week – Gaza, dog control, George W. Bush's awarding the Medal of Freedom to John Howard and the Howards' stay in Blair House, and cricket. Quadrant, Windschuttle and the hoax didn't make the list.

But what about Grumpy Old Journo? Look at me – I'm posting this long, heavy analysis of a subject most Australians now find boring. No wonder I have so few readers.

There is hope. My previous post, in which I referred to my concerns, attracted some really helpful advice, and I've talked it over with some knowledgable friends. I expect my next post will consider a new approach for Grumpy Old Journo. I'll try to put something up by midday Monday, January 12.
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Sorry I'm late, but I've got a note

I'd promised myself I'd never read another Miranda Devine newspaper column. She sings from the Quadrant songbook (which she helped compile as a Quadrant editorial committee member). You'll find her arguments more carefully presented if you go to her sources.

It's not that I've closed my mind to conservative points of view, but lately I've been overwhelmed by the material I try to get through and I've tried to cull time-wasting rubbish.

For reasons I'll give a little further down, I believe time-wasting rubbish includes Ms Devine's newspaper columns.

Like a management consultant cutting costs, I've slashed my reading – partly because Merry and I were having some terse words about the piles of old papers in our spare bedroom cum study, and partly because I was becoming a little down about my inability to keep up with it all and still have a life.

The other day I allocated several hours to go through the heap before carrying it to the recycling bin. All was going well, until I spotted Sydney Morning Herald artist John Shakespeare's caricature of museum director Dawn Casey (detail, left). It illustrated a Miranda Devine column in the SMH on March 27, Beware new front in culture wars.

Basically, Ms Devine rehashes just about all the accusations the hard right hurled against Ms Casey to get her sacked as director of the National Museum of Australia. It's hard to avoid the conclusion that Ms Devine would like to see Ms Casey also sacked from her new role as director of Sydney's Powerhouse Museum.

I wouldn't have bothered with a response to Ms Devine's piece, especially since more than a month has gone by, but on December 24 last year I hailed Dawn Casey's appointment to the Powerhouse Museum with a post headed "Another honour for Howard's 'history wars' victim".

In that post, I said I tried not to be a Howard-hater, but I came closest when the then Prime Minister John Howard sacked (technically, failed to renew the contract of) Dawn Casey after her NMA exhibits enraged conservative commentators including Ms Devine.

In her March 27 diatribe, Ms Devine says Casey "will be forever hailed by legions of Howard-haters as the heroine who gave Howard 'one in the eye' ". Right on, Miranda!

Even only a little of what she's accused of is true, Dawn Casey is the most effective Aboriginal guerilla fighter since Pemulwy.

If Miranda and her mates are to be believed, she'd sneaked her subversive agenda under the noses of the museum's board, mocking the "three cheers for our British heritage" history close to the heart of all right-thinking Australians. Out there in the courtyard, crowds of people were running their fingers along dots on a wall, exclaiming to one another, "Good God! It says 'sorry'."

She almost got away with it, too.

It's true the museum's council was chaired by a Liberal Party elder, but Tony Staley is a moderate with a regrettable tendency to balanced views. It was early days for the Howard government, and the Great Leader still had a long way to go in stacking the nation's cultural institutions (such as the ABC, SBS, the National Museum, various education inquiries, the Public Service, etc.) with reliable men and women.

Still, he had rewarded Christopher Pearson, columnist for the Weekend Australian and speechwriter for both Howard and his Foreign Minister Alexander Downer, and David Barnett, author of an admiring biography of the Great Leader, with seats on the National Museum board.

Luckily for all right-thinking Australians, David Barnett was not to be duped. He compiled a list of thousands of examples of bias in the museum's exhibit labels. Staley and other moderates on the board couldn't see a problem, and an inquiry by Monash University history professor Graeme Davison found only a few minor errors.

Apart from its rehash of old accusations against Dawn Casey, Ms Devine's column is instructive about the Quadrant mindset.

--ooOOoo--

The Quadrant mob profess a commendable commitment to free speech. In the Balmain Town Hall last year, at a function to honour retiring Quadrant editor Paddy McGuinness (who died of melanoma cancer not long after), incoming editor Keith Windschuttle spoke of the need to defend free speech and quoted the examples of Geoffrey Blainey and Hans Eysenck. This year, in the first Quadrant under his editorship, he repeated his words.

Blainey we know about. After his 1984 breakfast speech to Warrnambool Rotarians, the prominent historian found himself attacked from the left and cheered from the right because of newspaper reports that he'd attacked Asian immigration.

The attack from the left was inexcusable, but I think that at first Professor Blainey looked at both sides with disdain. His speech had welcomed the diversity and tolerance of Australia's population, although he did go on to warn that Asian immigration was pushing ahead of public acceptance.

As he explained at a Melbourne University history symposium a month later, he did not necessarily find this view palatable, but as an historian he had to report it as he found it.

Eysenck was a pyschology professor in London, the author of two popular Pelican paperbacks, The Uses and Abuses of Pyschology and Sense and Nonsense In Pyschology. Among his many controversial views, those linking IQ to race provoked student protests.

Hasn't Windschuttle got a good memory? If I remember right, Eysenck faced those rowdy students back in the late 1950s or early 60s when I was a very junior journalist and Windschuttle was preaching the wonders of LSD to fellow uni students.

After Keith Windschuttle's noble words, let's see how he and his conservative allies put their defence of free speech into effect.

It seems that in early discussions about the role of the National Museum of Australia, the ultra-conservatives had failed to win their way. Moderate conservatives (these labels are so awkward, aren't they? – but I can't see another way to say it) prevailed.

As the museum opened, with Dawn Casey winning praise for her efforts, the ultras struck back.

Miranda Devine, Keith Windschuttle, David Barnett, Christopher Pearson and Piers Ackerman – all relentless warriors on the conservative side of the history wars – shaped the bullets and loaded the gun, before handing it to Prime Minister John Howard and pointing out his target.

One hopes the target was not more clearly defined by Ms Casey's being Aboriginal.

The Quadrant mob's support for free speech is as believable as was Mao Zedong's when he declared: "Let a hundred flowers bloom, let the hundred schools of thought contend." When your opponents step forward, gun them down.

--ooOOoo--

Ms Devine is remiss in another way, too. She fails to tell her readers that two inquiries failed to find much wrong with Ms Casey's work. As I wrote last December:

Staley turned to Geoffrey Blainey, the historian most admired by conservatives, who suggested Monash University history professor Graeme Davison review Barnett's allegations. Davison examined them in detail, checked them against historical sources, and said Barnett's criticisms were ill-founded.

Ms Devine doesn't mention this at all. Nor does she say that with the ultra-conservatives still frothing at the mouth, the NMA council decided on an external review. As I wrote in December:

The responsible Howard minister, Rod Kemp, chose as chairman John Carroll, a conservative with connections to the right-wing propaganda organisation (a.k.a. "think tank"), the Institute of Public Affairs. Other members included Philip Jones, a senior curator at the South Australian Museum who had won the conservatives' approval during the Hindmarsh Island affair.

Balancing them were Sydney businessman Richard Longes and a palaeobiologist, Professor Patricia Vickers-Rich. One might ask: Where was the historian? But despite the appearance of a stacked inquiry, the committee, against all expectations, reported no problem with political or cultural bias at the NMA.

Ms Devine doesn't tell her readers this. She does say:

The NMA under Casey was notable, according to the Carroll report of the collection, for its almost complete lack of science, technology and industrial content.

That's her only reference to the Carroll report. Really helpful to her readers, isn't she?

--ooOOoo--

If you'd like to check my assessment of the Carroll findings, go to the museum's report, scroll down and click on the attachment link to bring up the report as a PDF file. Its conclusions may be found in Section 6, particularly on P67 and 68.

To read a more detailed exposition of the conservatives' case against Dawn Casey (and against Professor Davison), Keith Windschuttle's website reprints his Quadrant attack of September 2001. No doubt a search of his website will find others.

Some of my post has taken material from Professor Stuart Macintyre's The History Wars (Melb University Press, 2003), particularly Chapter 10, Working through the museum's labels, but generally I've also checked it out with contemporary press reports. I'm aware Macintyre is on the hate list of some conservatives, but his current appointment as visiting Professor of Australian Studies at Harvard shows he has the respect of his peers.

In the final pages of The museum's labels chapter, Macintyre attacks some of Windschuttle's claims about Professor Davison [made in his Quadrant attack mentioned above], and says: "Windschuttle's misreading of Davison's views is as dishonest as any of the charges of intellectual dishonesty he makes against the historical profession."