Rupert Murdoch’s son Lachlan drops defamation lawsuit against Crikey after Dominion settlement

The son of billionaire businessman Rupert Murdoch, Lachlan, has withdrawn his defamation lawsuit against the independent Australian news website Crikey.

The co-chairman of News Corp and CEO of Fox Corporation had alleged that Crikey defamed him in June 2022 in an article written by the political editor.

That op-ed, written by Bernard Keane, referred to the Murdoch family as “unindicted co-conspirators” in the January 6, 2021 riots at the U.S. Capitol.

Crikey, who challenged Mr. Murdoch to sue them, raised at least $588,735 in a GoFundMe appeal and capitalized on the case with a marketing campaign that featured an ad in the New York Times.

The publisher called Friday’s announcement a “substantial victory for legitimate public interest journalism.”

“We stand by what we published last June and everything we laid out in court defense,” said CEO Will Hayward. “The allegations Murdoch drew from that article were ludicrous.

“This is a victory for freedom of expression. We won.’

In a statement Friday morning, Mr Murdoch’s lawyer, John Churchill, said he had filed a notice of cessation with the Federal Court of Australia.

“It is common knowledge that Crikey admits that there is no truth to the allegations made in the article about Mr Murdoch,” said Mr Churchill.

“In their latest attempt 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.”

That was in reference to News Corp settling a separate lawsuit with polling agency Dominion a few days ago for AUD$1.2 billion (USD$787.5 million).

The news came to rest after Dominion alleged that the Fox News network, owned by Murdoch, broadcast false claims that its machines were being used to rig the 2020 presidential election.

The agreement to close the case avoided a lawsuit in which Rupert Murdoch and primetime Fox News stars, including Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity, would have been forced to testify in open court.

Churchill said Crikey had tried to use the Dominion lawsuit to suggest that Fox News was the cause of the riots at the Capitol.

“In that case, the Delaware judge ruled that the events of January 6, 2021, in the U.S. Capitol were irrelevant,” Churchill said.

“Furthermore, the plaintiff made it clear to Dominion Voting Systems that it would not allege that Fox News caused the events of January 6, and at no point has it ever alleged that Mr. Murdoch was personally responsible…”

In a statement Friday morning, Mr Murdoch’s lawyer, John Churchill, said he had filed a notice of cessation with the Federal Court of Australia. Rupert Murdoch is pictured

Mr Churchill said that Crikey had nevertheless tried to make that argument in the Federal Court of Australia.

“Mr Murdoch remains confident that the court will eventually find in his favor,” he said.

However, he does not want to further allow Crikey to use the court to litigate a case from another jurisdiction that has already been settled and to facilitate a marketing campaign designed to attract subscribers and increase their profits to increase.’

Mr Hayward described those comments as an ‘absurd suggestion’.

The fact is that Murdoch sued us and then dropped the case,” he said.

Crikey had maintained that his op-ed was not defamatory and that its content was in the public interest.

In its most recent defense, the publisher claimed that Fox News “promoted and spread Trump’s stolen election lie despite Lachlan Murdoch knowing it was false.”

Fox continues to face a $2.7 billion lawsuit from another voice technology company, Smartmatic, over its reporting of debunked claims of voter fraud.