Ross Coulthart

Coulthart was born in the UK. He later moved along with his family to New Zealand and enrolled at the Victoria University of Wellington, where he graduated with a law degree. He then moved to Australia, where he started his career as a journalist.[1]

On a February 21, 1994 episode of the Australian TV program Four Corners, Coulthart broadcast an allegation that the Australian Secret Intelligence Service "secretly holds tens of thousands of files on Australian citizens, a database completely outside privacy laws".[2] Coulthart's allegations prompted the Minister for Foreign Affairs Gareth Evans to call a "root and branch" review of the ASIS led by Justice Gordon Samuels and Mr Mike Codd. In their Report on the Australian Secret Intelligence Service released in 1995, Coulthart's allegation was investigated and denied by Samuels and Codd,[3] but Evans did acknowledge that "ASIS does have some files, as one would expect in an organisation of that nature, even though its brief extends to activities outside the country rather than inside. They are essentially of an administrative nature."[4] While Samuels and Codd did find that certain grievances of former ASIS officers were well founded,[5] they observed that the information published in the Four Corners program was "skewed towards the false",[6] that "the level of factual accuracy about operational matters was not high",[7] and, quoting an aphorism, that "what was disturbing was not true and what was true was not disturbing".[7] They concluded that the disclosure of the information was unnecessary and unjustifiable and had damaged the reputation of ASIS and Australia overseas.[6]

In 2008, Coulthart wrote about an Australian medical scandal entitled The Butcher of Bega.[8] He also wrote an expose of cronyism and impropriety in Australian Aboriginal Legal Services.

In 2010, he reinvestigated the murder of two young Australian tourists by IRA terrorists 20 years earlier.[9]

In 2014, Coulthart worked as chief investigations reporter for Channel 7's Sunday Night news program but resigned after being involved in "a newsroom brawl".[10] Coulthart worked as an investigative journalist for Australian news and current affairs program 60 Minutes on Channel Nine, but left in 2018 after his contract was not renewed.[11]

In 2018, Coulthart was employed by a public relations firm, where he managed the public relations for ex-soldier and accused war criminal Ben Roberts-Smith,[12] who in 2023 was found by Justice Anthony Besanko to have participated in the murder of four Afghans.[13]

Coulthart returned to reporting, focussing on proving the existence of UFOs. In August 2023, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s Media Watch program questioned Coulthart’s work in a piece titled: “Journalist Ross Coulthart continues his crusade to uncover the truth about alien spacecraft and non-human intelligence despite no public evidence to support their existence.”[14]

In 2021, Coulthart starred in The UFO Phenomenon, a special television series for Seven News in Australia that claimed to "unearth startling new evidence of UFOs from government officials and eyewitnesses that will change everything you thought you knew about the universe."[15]

In 2021, Coulthart authored a UFO-themed book titled In Plain Sight: An Investigation into UFOs and Impossible Science. Jason Colavito reviewed Coulthart's book, saying it was "less a serious analysis and more of a book report on the last works of the leaders of the faith". Colavito criticized Coulthart's work, suggesting Coulthart was exploiting current public interest in UFO's for profit, similar to UFO enthusiasts Leslie Kean and George Knapp.[16]

In 2022, Coulthart and co-host Bryce Zabel began hosting Need To Know, a UFOlogy podcast promoted as "revealing the mysteries of the universe to the people of the earth".[17]

In June 2023, Coulthart conducted an interview for NewsNation with David Grusch and joined Grusch in alleging that the U.S. federal government maintains a highly secretive UFO retrieval program and is in possession of both extraterrestrial spacecraft and the corpses of non-human pilots.[18]

Coulthart won the 1996 Logie Award for Most Outstanding Achievement in Public Affairs for an expose of corruption in Australian Aboriginal Legal Services.[19][20]

In 2002, he and Max Stahl won the Gold Medal for best international report at the New York Film Festival for an investigation into how Indonesian and militia perpetrators of violence in East Timor had escaped punishment.[21]

He won the 2008 Gold Walkley with Nick Farrow for the report Butcher of Bega: Investigation of a doctor's alleged malpractice and incompetence in Bega which aired on Sunday on Nine Network.[22][23]

Coulthart was joint winner of the 2015 Prime Minister's Prize for Australian History for Charles Bean.[24]

• co-author Dead Man Running
• co-author Above the Law
• Charles Bean (Harper Collins)[25]
• Lost Diggers[26]
• The Lost Tommies[27]
• In Plain Sight: an Investigation Into UFOs and Impossible Science (2021, reprinted 2023)

• Samuels, Gordon J.; Codd, Michael H. (1995). Commission of Inquiry into the Australian Secret Intelligence Service, Report on the Australian Secret Intelligence Service (Public Edition) (PDF). Australian Government Publishing Service. ISBN 0-644-43201-2. Archived from the original (PDF) on 5 March 2016. Retrieved 11 November 2015.

• Official website