Crikey lawsuit: Lachlan Murdoch fails at first hurdle in his defamation case against publisher
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Lachlan Murdoch fails at first hurdle in his defamation case against online publisher – but part of news site’s case was also shot by judge
- Libel dispute between Lachlan Murdoch and publication Crikey
- Bids from both sides to invalidate each other’s pleas failed in court
- Indictment over US House of Representative hearings and Capitol riots stuk
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Media mogul Lachlan Murdoch and news publication Crikey both unsuccessfully attacked each other’s pleas during a hotly contested defamation lawsuit.
Bids by media mogul Lachlan Murdoch and Australian news publication Crikey to negate each other’s pleas have failed amid a bitter defamation dispute.
On Friday, Judge Michael Wigney found there was no appropriate reason to drop Crikey’s public interest defense. He rejected Mr Murdoch’s claims that parts of the defense were a “furphy” and were evasive, ambiguous or harmful.
“I am also not convinced that those paragraphs together do not provide a reasonable defense,” the judge in the Federal Court said.
It was “disputable at the very least” that the facts alleged by the publication about the January 6 riots in the US showed that the article was written in the public interest, he said.
“I am not convinced that the facts stated are demonstrably irrelevant.”
Lachlan Murdoch, pictured with wife Sarah at the 2019 Vanity Fair Oscar party, has encountered his first hurdle in his defamation lawsuit against news publication Crikey
Murdoch also failed to remove other pieces of defense related to mitigation, including claims that he had a bad reputation as head of Fox News, an organization engaged in “biased reporting” and “systematic unethical practices.”
Crikey relies on statements from American Fox commentators such as Tucker Carlson, Jeanine Pirro and Sean Hannity to back up these allegations.
“Our system has never been more disorganized and it has never been more vulnerable to manipulation,” Carlson said in November 2020.
Days before January 6, Pirro publicly scolded the “hypocrisy of the left” and questioned whether Joe Biden was the legitimate president of the United States.
On Friday, Judge Wigney also shot down Crikey’s bid to scrap part of the media mogul’s response, alleging the publisher had acted maliciously.
If Mr Murdoch could prove that the main purpose of the article was harm, it would defeat the public interest defense, the judge noted.
The News Corp co-chair and chief executive of Fox Corporation is suing Crikey over a June 29 op-ed by political editor Bernard Keane, which was removed and then put back online on August 15.
The media mogul is suing Crikey over a political op-ed about US House hearings into former President Donald Trump and the Washington DC Capitol riots in January 2021
It covered US House of Representatives hearings on former President Donald Trump and the Washington DC Capitol riot on January 6, 2021.
Murdoch claims it contained defamatory claims, including that he entered into an illegal criminal conspiracy with Mr. Trump to overturn the 2020 US presidential election and incite a mob with murderous intent to march toward the Capitol.
The article was titled ‘Trump is a confirmed traitor on the loose. And Murdoch is his unindicted co-conspirator.”
In the lawsuit, Murdoch is suing Crikey’s publisher Private Media, Keane and editor-in-chief Peter Fray.
A nine-day trial will start on March 27.
Crikey publisher Eric Beecher wrote an open letter challenging the Murdochs to take legal action against his website