Crikey may be a nimble, tiger of a news media organisation, but its agility and strength are about to be tested. Last week, the Federal Court agreed to add Crikey owner, Private Media Chairman, Eric Beecher and its Chief Executive Will Hayward as respondents in a defamation action brought against it by Lachlan Murdoch. It’s a significant win for the Murdoch camp which claims Crikey falsely asserted that Murdoch illegally conspired with former US President Donald Trump to overturn the 2020 election result.
Until this decision, it was Crikey’s political editor Bernard Keane and editor in chief Peter Fray (formerly co-director here at the CMT) who were cited as respondents.
The action centres around a piece Crikey published in 2022 which claimed the Murdoch’s were the ‘unindicted co-conspirators' in the January 6, 2021 US capital attack, an event which shocked the US and indeed the world, and mounted after Donald Trump lost the 2020 US election.
When Crikey first published the article outside its paywall, it was asked by Lachlan Murdoch to remove it. The publication did so, but decided to repost it in August 2022, inviting Lachlan Murdoch to sue. Murdoch claims that between July and August 2022 when the article was republished, Fray, Beecher and Hayward “contrived a scheme to improperly use the complaints by Murdoch about the (original) article to generate subscriptions to Crikey and thus income to Private Media under the guise of defending public interest journalism”. The application to extend the proceedings to include Beecher and Hayward came from the discovery process which can sometimes be perilous.
According to Murdoch, that process revealed Private Media had engaged a public relations firm to design a means to increase subscriptions and maximise publicity. Murdoch claims Crikey intended to commercialise the dispute to generate profits, sought to cause offence to Murdoch in order that he not resolve the dispute, and intended to falsely claim that they (Crikey) had been intimidated, bullied and dragged into a David v Goliath battle.
Crikey intends using the new public interest defence whilst arguing the published article didn’t actually suggest the Murdochs were guilty of criminally conspiring with the protesters who stormed the US capital in 2021. Murdoch’s barrister Sue Chrysanthou SC argued the new defence isn’t applicable to Crikey whilst Crikey’s barrister, Michael Hodge KC argued “It is either true or untrue that Rupert Murdoch, members of the Murdoch family who control these global media conglomerates and Lachlan Murdoch have not disavowed the lies about the US presidential election.” Justice Michael Wigney hasn’t decided if the public interest defence can be argued.
In other ‘defo’ news – both Ten’s Lisa Wilkinson and News Corp’s Samantha Maiden have been named as respondents in Bruce Lehrmann’s defamation action against the reporters' respective employers. Lehrmann stood trial last year in the ACT, charged with sexual intercourse without consent. The trial was aborted in October and the charges against him were later dropped due to concerns about the mental health of the complainant, Brittany Higgins. Lehrmann alleges TEN and News Corp were recklessly indifferent to the truth or falsity of the claims made against him.
Monica Attard, CMT Co-Director