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Allan Ashbolt
Allan Campbell Ashbolt (24 November 1921 – 9 June 2005) was an Australian journalist, producer, and broadcaster. Early lifeHe was born in Melbourne and attended Caulfield Grammar School. He served with the Australian Imperial Force in World War II.[1] Following the war, Ashbolt began acting and helped establish the Mercury Theatre with Peter Finch among others. He appeared in government documentary films. Ashbolt was a film librarian at the NSW Film Council in the mid-fifties, before he was hired by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (ABC) as a producer.[2] CareerIn 1959 he was appointed as the ABC's first North America correspondent. In 1963 he served as a correspondent and executive producer of Four Corners,[3] which has become Australia's longest-running investigative journalism/current affairs television program. He was known for his belief that the ABC — which had been and was almost entirely conservative at the time — should promote free speech and controversial political content. Ashbolt held senior positions at the ABC, until retiring after a 25-year career with the network. He also wrote for the New Statesman, a leftist British political magazine. As the late Ken Inglis AO acknowledged in his sympathetic history, This is the ABC, the leftist takeover of the public broadcaster began in the late 1960s when the self-proclaimed Marxist, Ashbolt, began stacking the organisation with young Leftists, like George Negus. Together, these cadet journalists were affectionately referred to as “Ashbolt’s kindergarten”.[4] When these youngsters became senior journalists they followed suit, with notables like Kerry O'Brien (journalist), nurtured to continue producing leftist views, as if they were mainstream. This mission was entirely successful: today there are no journalists at the ABC who identify as subscribing to views from the Right. He died in Sydney in June 2005.[5] See alsoReferences
External links
“Ashbolt’s kindergarten” [1]
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