Miranda Devine

Miranda Devine is an Australian columnist and writer, noted for her conservative stance on a range of social and political issues. Her column is printed twice weekly in Fairfax Media newspapers, The Sydney Morning Herald and The Sun-Herald.

Biography

Miranda Devine is the eldest of three children of newspaper editor Frank Devine. She was born in New York in the early 1960s. Her family later moved to London and then lived in Tokyo for six years. Afterwards, her family settled on Sydney's North Shore.

While in Tokyo, she and her two younger sisters attended an American International School, but learned to speak Japanese fluently. A devout Roman Catholic, Devine completed her high school education at Loreto Kirribilli, a Catholic girl's private school in Sydney. After school, she completed a mathematics degree at Macquarie University. On receipt of her degree, Devine joined the CSIRO in their textile physics division. She would however only spend a year there, finding the work unrewarding.

On recommendation from her father, Devine travelled to Chicago to attain a Masters degree at Northwestern University's Medill graduate school of journalism. She worked for the Boston Herald as a reporter and feature writer. Devine returned to Sydney in 1989 and soon after joined The Daily Telegraph as a police reporter. She was promoted to assistant editor and, later, opinion columnist in the early 1990s by the Telegraph's then editor Col Allan who wanted a strong female voice representing the then very masculine newspaper. Devine's columns became so popular that when she married and wanted to change her name, Allan objected.

In 2001, after Allan had left for New York, Devine turned down the Telegraph's offer of more money and took up an offer to write for its main rival The Sydney Morning Herald. Devine is a personal friend of fellow conservative columnist Tim Blair, who said of her: "She's got good antennae. She can read people which is why she accurately predicts election results."

When interviewed for an April 2007 article in The Australian about hate mail received by female columnists, Devine commented: “You are contesting ideas and you have to do it in a polarising way. When you write a column, you can't sit on the fence.”

Devine is a member of the editorial advisory board of the conservative Quadrant magazine.

Controversy

In their 2007 book, Silencing Dissent, editors Clive Hamilton and Sarah Maddison included Miranda Devine among ten whom they said "form a sort of syndicate of right-wing commentators who receive favour from the Howard Government." Radio broadcaster and columnist Mike Carlton criticised the same commentators (which included Miranda Devine) for accepting paid positions offered by the Howard government. In Miranda Devine's case, she was appointed to the Australian Government's National Inquiry into the Teaching of Literacy from 2004 to 2005. Said Carlton, "I don't think working journalists should take even one lousy cent from government paymasters."

In 2007, Devine travelled to Iraq and Afghanistan with former Australian Defence Minister Brendan Nelson, Australian Defence Force Chief, Air Chief Marshal Angus Houston, and The Australian political editor Dennis Shanahan (Political Editor). The resulting exclusive interview by Devine and Shanahan with US General David Petraeus was criticised by Media Watch for reporting figures given to her by Gen. Petraeus. Media Watch claimed that Devine and the Sydney Morning Herald gave front page coverage to Petraeus's figures, which claimed significant decline in Iraqi and combat related deaths. Soon after an AFP newswire stated that in fact the number of deaths from the last month had risen. The Australian's Dennis Shanahan, who also accompanied Devine to Iraq and Afghanistan, was specifically asked by Petraeus's office to report the figures as 'last year.'

Petraeus himself had been criticised for often using language and quoting figures to give a more optimistic picture then could be percieved as justified. Some commentators have accused those associated with the former Howard Government such as Brendan Nelson and (defence Chief) Angus Houston of deliberately inviting more 'hawkish'/conservative reporters because of their tendency to report in a manner percieved as more favourable to the political narrative of the Howard government. The Australian is owned by Rupert Murdoch, who has often given personal approval to conservative policies, esspecially the War on Terror, of which the invasion of Iraq is considered a part.

External links

• Miranda Devine's Sydney Morning Herald column