Miranda Devine

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Miranda Devine is an Australian columnist and writer for The Sydney Morning Herald, noted for her conservative stance on a range of social and political issues, and for her defence of Howard government policy.

1 Biography
2 Controversy
3 References
4 External links

[edit] Biography

Born in New York in the early 1960s, Devine's family later moved to London and then Tokyo where they resided for six years. She is the eldest of three children of famous newspaper editor Frank Devine. Afterwards, her family settled on Sydney's North Shore.

Whilst in Tokyo, she and her two younger sisters attended an American International School, but were able to speak Japanese fluently. A devout Roman Catholic, Devine's high school education was completed at Loreto Kirribilli, a Catholic girl's private school. 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 attend the Medill graduate school of journalism. There, she worked for the Boston Herald as a city-beat reporter. Devine returned to Sydney in 1989 and soon after joined The Daily Telegraph as a general reporter. She was promoted in the early 1990s by the Telegraph's then editor Col Allan who wanted a strong female voice representing the then very masculine newspaper. There, Devine would establish herself as a staunch conservative, and politically polarising figure. Devine's name became so entrenched with her right-wing commentary that when she married and wanted to change her name, Allan objected.

In 2000, 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.

Miranda Devine also sits on the Editorial Advisory Board of the right-wing Quadrant magazine.^[1]

[edit] Controversy

In their book, Silencing Dissent (Allen & Unwin), journalists Clive Hamilton and Sarah Maddison accuse Miranda Devine of belonging to a "syndicate of right-wing commentators who receive favour from the Howard Government."^[2]

Mike Carlton, a rival columnist with the Sydney Morning Herald, claimed that the Howard government rewarded Miranda Devine by giving her a job on a committee inquiring into literacy teaching. Said Carlton, "I don't think working journalists should take even one lousy cent from government paymasters."^[3]^[4]

Devine often attracts criticism for her views, as sometimes seen in the Letters page of the Sydney Morning Herald. Her views are sometimes seen as out of touch, for example, referring to Sarah Murdoch wife of one of Australia's richest men Lachlan Murdoch as being "plagued by the same doubts as any working mother". [1]