Conservative columnist Andrew Bolt has today been found guilty of breaching the Racial Discrimination Act over a 2009 article in which he accused fair-skinned Aboriginal people of playing up being black for career advancement.

Federal Court Justice Mordecai Bromberg found that Bolt’s article was likely to have “an intimidatory effect on some fair skinned Aboriginal people and in particular young Aboriginal persons or others with vulnerability in relation to their identity”.

He also criticised Bolt for writing an article that contained “errors of fact, distortions of the truth and inflammatory and provocative language”.

The Power Index last month named Bolt the most powerful Megaphone in Australia because of his talent as a provocateur and enormous reach across TV, print, radio and online.

Author Anita Heiss, one of the nine applicants in the case, today released a statement celebrating Justice Bromberg’s decision. She writes that Bolt’s article “discredited me professionally, while also offending, insulting and humiliating me. People on his blog also made racist remarks that also offended, insulted and humiliated me. I have always identified and lived as an Aboriginal woman…”

The other applicants included indigenous academic Larissa Behrendt, former ATSIC chief Geoff Clark and artist Bindi Cole. In the article – titled “White is the new Black” – Bolt claimed Behrendt “looks almost as German as her father”. Her father was, in fact, the late Aboriginal oral historian Paul Behrendt.

Justice Blomberg ordered no settlement on the parties, who will negotiate between them what measures Bolt and the Herald Sun will take.