Lachlan Murdoch drops defamation suit against Australia’s Crikey
Move comes days after Fox News agreed to pay out $787.5 million for false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from Donald Trump.
Media scion Lachlan Murdoch has dropped a defamation lawsuit against the publisher of Australian news site Crikey days after Fox News agreed to pay out $787.5 million over false claims that the 2020 election was stolen from the former American President Donald Trump.
Murdoch, the chief executive of Fox Corporation, sued last year over a Crikey op-ed that he said contained “outrageous allegations” about his alleged complicity in the January 6 riots at the Capitol, including that his family had “unindicted fellow conspirators”. in Trump’s attempts to reverse the election results.
Murdoch’s lawyer in Australia said Friday that his client believed he would have won the case but did not want the outlet to continue airing claims about the recently settled libel case against Fox News in order to “attract subscribers and maximize their profits.” increase”.
Fox News on Tuesday agreed to pay a $787.5 million settlement to voting machine company Dominion Voting Systems for falsely suggesting it had rigged the 2020 presidential election in favor of US President Joe Biden.
“It is common knowledge that Crikey admits that there is no truth to the allegations made in the article about Mr Murdoch,” said Murdoch’s lawyer, John Churchill.
“In their latest effort to change their defense strategy, Crikey attempted to enter thousands of pages of documents from a defamation case in another jurisdiction, which has now been settled.”
Private Media, Crikey’s Melbourne-based publisher, described Murdoch’s decision to drop the case as “a substantial victory for legitimate public interest journalism”.
“We stand by what we published last June,” the company said in a statement.
“The fact is that Murdoch sued us and then dropped his case. We are proud to have exposed the hypocrisy and abuse of power of a media billionaire. This is a victory for freedom of expression. We won.”
A federal court judge had earlier this month ordered the parties to enter a second round of mediation ahead of a trial scheduled for October, saying the case was driven more by “ego and hubris and ideology than anything else.”