Australia, like the U.K. and Ireland and most other democracies, is far less protective of defamation than the United States. But it's clear that Australian law needs some modification: can it really be defamation to accuse the Murdochs and their Fascist News network of helping incite the stormtrooper riot at the Capitol building last year? From a recent article:
Rupert Murdoch's eldest son -- who is also chief executive of Fox News parent Fox Corporation -- is suing Crikey over an opinion piece that linked his family's media empire to the January 6, 2021 storming of the US Capitol by supporters of then-President Donald Trump.
The media scion's lawyers claimed their client was defamed over a dozen times in the article, which accused "the Murdochs and their slew of poisonous Fox News commentators" of being "unindicted co-conspirators" in the Capitol riot....
Crikey's defence, filed with the Federal Court Tuesday, denied it defamed Murdoch and flagged it would lean on two new defences created by [recent law] reforms.
"One is a serious harm threshold... the plaintiff now has to prove that they not only suffered some harm to reputation, but that it was serious harm to reputation," Rolph explained.
Crikey will also seek to argue that the opinion piece, by writer Bernard Keane, was in the public interest.
"I suppose the difficulty here is that defence is entirely untested. This will be a test case of that," Rolph said.
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