‘We welcome Murdoch’s writ’
August 24, 2022 3:50 AM Subscribe
For almost two months Crikey has faced the threat of legal action by Lachlan Murdoch over an article about Fox News, Donald Trump and the Jan 6 Washington insurrection. Last night, Lachlan Murdoch finally issued his writ. We welcome it. Today, we continue our coverage of Mr Murdoch’s legal letters and related issues. The letters show how media power works in this country. Crikey will not be silenced. [CW: contains Trump & Murdochs]
Australia has British-style libel laws, originally drafted to protect the powerful from insolent underlings and heavily biased in favour of plaintiffs. I expect that Crikey will be Thieled into a smoking crater.
posted by acb at 5:55 AM on August 24, 2022 [9 favorites]
posted by acb at 5:55 AM on August 24, 2022 [9 favorites]
So if you're a bumper-sticker sort of person...
I'm actually surprised little Murdoch has gone through with it. I presume the point (for Crikey) is to get a nice juicy discovery phase before any actual court stuff.
posted by pompomtom at 7:37 AM on August 24, 2022 [3 favorites]
I'm actually surprised little Murdoch has gone through with it. I presume the point (for Crikey) is to get a nice juicy discovery phase before any actual court stuff.
posted by pompomtom at 7:37 AM on August 24, 2022 [3 favorites]
→
Maybe not. Private Eye in the UK has survived many attempts to shut it down in a very hostile legal environment.
posted by scruss at 7:46 AM on August 24, 2022 [12 favorites]
I expect that Crikey will be Thieled into a smoking crater
Maybe not. Private Eye in the UK has survived many attempts to shut it down in a very hostile legal environment.
posted by scruss at 7:46 AM on August 24, 2022 [12 favorites]
I'm also really curious why Crikey is so keen, because it seemed to me that the original article was defamatory - it took a drive-by swipe at a Murdoch, but spent most of its word count on Trump. Not a peep on why one of the two Murdochs should be indicted. As chairman of Fox News, Lachlan is, I think, entitled to claim that the article refers to him and his company's association with Trump.
posted by Merus at 8:26 AM on August 24, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by Merus at 8:26 AM on August 24, 2022 [1 favorite]
Do facts have anything to do with it? It’s a fact that Fox and it’s talk show hosts have supported Trump up to and beyond Jan. 6, though the article doesn’t lay out specifics. I’m not being snarky, I genuinely don’t know the law on this.
posted by zenzenobia at 9:40 AM on August 24, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by zenzenobia at 9:40 AM on August 24, 2022 [1 favorite]
Do facts have anything to do with it?
This is the Murdoch Death Star we're talking about.
No. No, they do not.
posted by flabdablet at 9:54 AM on August 24, 2022 [5 favorites]
This is the Murdoch Death Star we're talking about.
No. No, they do not.
posted by flabdablet at 9:54 AM on August 24, 2022 [5 favorites]
Well, I wish them good luck with this. No idea how to assess the likelihood of how this would go in Australia, though.
posted by jenfullmoon at 10:10 AM on August 24, 2022 [1 favorite]
posted by jenfullmoon at 10:10 AM on August 24, 2022 [1 favorite]
Youngest son James Murdoch exited the family business stage left over climate and Trump.
Subpoenaing him might raise the stakes as well as the pain level for the Murdochs in an interesting way if it were to be possible.
posted by jamjam at 11:06 AM on August 24, 2022 [10 favorites]
Subpoenaing him might raise the stakes as well as the pain level for the Murdochs in an interesting way if it were to be possible.
posted by jamjam at 11:06 AM on August 24, 2022 [10 favorites]
Remember when Trump sent his cult followers to overthrow the government, and when he was put on trial half of the jury were also his cult followers?
This is like that. Murdoch owns a political party in Australia. This has been true for at least four decades. If this is a legal loss is almost irrelevant. The Murdoch party and media will lie about it, brain-washing machine goes brrrrrr, and the cult followers will know who the 'real' victim is and again vote for the Murdoch party.
It's not an understatement to suggest the Murdochs have doomed our planet. When historians write about what Earth was like with a stable climate, they'll have to explain how the public was manipulated by the media. Or when they write about the rise of fascism in America, they'll have to explain how the public was manipulated by the media. It all comes back to this family of evil bastards. Goebbels could only dream of this power.
Fuck them. I dream of a future without them.
posted by adept256 at 12:12 PM on August 24, 2022 [27 favorites]
This is like that. Murdoch owns a political party in Australia. This has been true for at least four decades. If this is a legal loss is almost irrelevant. The Murdoch party and media will lie about it, brain-washing machine goes brrrrrr, and the cult followers will know who the 'real' victim is and again vote for the Murdoch party.
It's not an understatement to suggest the Murdochs have doomed our planet. When historians write about what Earth was like with a stable climate, they'll have to explain how the public was manipulated by the media. Or when they write about the rise of fascism in America, they'll have to explain how the public was manipulated by the media. It all comes back to this family of evil bastards. Goebbels could only dream of this power.
Fuck them. I dream of a future without them.
posted by adept256 at 12:12 PM on August 24, 2022 [27 favorites]
Do facts have anything to do with it? It’s a fact that Fox and it’s talk show hosts have supported Trump up to and beyond Jan. 6, though the article doesn’t lay out specifics. I’m not being snarky, I genuinely don’t know the law on this.
Neither do I, but my assumption is that if you're going to claim that Murdoch should be indicted as a co-conspirator, you would need to include some evidence of actual criminality. It is genuinely unusual that the article contains a single reference to a "Murdoch" in the closing sentence without ever referring to him or his company in the preceding article.
I need to emphasise this: the article does not claim that Murdoch provided any material support to Trump, before or after the election. It does not claim that Fox broadcast false material about the integrity of the election. It's just... dropped in there. (Murdoch will, no doubt, claim that they called the election accurately, and that other news networks were far more virulent in pushing the stolen election angle than Fox was, so why aren't the owners of Newsmax or OAN being accused of being co-conspirators? This is an interesting angle whose counterargument would have made a great addition to the piece!)
I would also assume that this isn't some kind of rope-a-dope strategy to prosecute a Murdoch for an American coup in an Australian defamation court, but this wouldn't be the first time Australian defamation courts ended up being de facto trials for serious crimes wildly outside their jurisdiction - take Ben Roberts-Smith and his defamation trial that became a war crimes trial.
posted by Merus at 6:51 PM on August 24, 2022 [3 favorites]
Neither do I, but my assumption is that if you're going to claim that Murdoch should be indicted as a co-conspirator, you would need to include some evidence of actual criminality. It is genuinely unusual that the article contains a single reference to a "Murdoch" in the closing sentence without ever referring to him or his company in the preceding article.
I need to emphasise this: the article does not claim that Murdoch provided any material support to Trump, before or after the election. It does not claim that Fox broadcast false material about the integrity of the election. It's just... dropped in there. (Murdoch will, no doubt, claim that they called the election accurately, and that other news networks were far more virulent in pushing the stolen election angle than Fox was, so why aren't the owners of Newsmax or OAN being accused of being co-conspirators? This is an interesting angle whose counterargument would have made a great addition to the piece!)
I would also assume that this isn't some kind of rope-a-dope strategy to prosecute a Murdoch for an American coup in an Australian defamation court, but this wouldn't be the first time Australian defamation courts ended up being de facto trials for serious crimes wildly outside their jurisdiction - take Ben Roberts-Smith and his defamation trial that became a war crimes trial.
posted by Merus at 6:51 PM on August 24, 2022 [3 favorites]
Context though: two MAJOR defamation trials recently in the public eye have had extremely negative results for the ones claiming defamation. Christian Porter outed himself as a rapist and technically 'won' but not really. Ben Roberts- Smith's trial revealed a whole swathe of war crimes and a dash of domestic violence to go with the inquires into SAS culture. It has concluded but no judgement yet.
The polite fiction of defamation laws protecting the upper class is less shiny now. The independent and scrappy media companies aren't beholden to the same cultural boys club as a lot of folk wish (and those that are tend to remain with Murdoch - see the recent news about Scott Morrison secretly holding ministerial positions being held back for their book release well after his term as opposed to when they found out).
posted by geek anachronism at 7:09 PM on August 24, 2022 [7 favorites]
The polite fiction of defamation laws protecting the upper class is less shiny now. The independent and scrappy media companies aren't beholden to the same cultural boys club as a lot of folk wish (and those that are tend to remain with Murdoch - see the recent news about Scott Morrison secretly holding ministerial positions being held back for their book release well after his term as opposed to when they found out).
posted by geek anachronism at 7:09 PM on August 24, 2022 [7 favorites]
Came across an article in the Post just now on this case. In the US, the claim Crikey made would be seen as hyperbole rather than a statement of fact (eg Fox is being criminally investigated and could be charged), but that isn’t the case in Australia, though Murdoch has benefited from it in the US:
The Murdochs have some familiarity with the hyperbole doctrine, considering that Fox News rode it to a court victory in 2020. Former Playboy model Karen McDougal sued Fox News over commentary by Tucker Carlson accusing her of committing “extortion” against Donald Trump. She’d done no such thing, but the federal judge in the case tossed the complaint: “Accusations of ‘extortion,’ ‘blackmail,’ and related crimes, such as the statements Mr. Carlson made here, are often construed as merely rhetorical hyperbole when they are not accompanied by additional specifics of the actions purportedly constituting the crime,” wrote U.S. District Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil.
(That’s a gift link so I hope it won’t run anyone into a paywall.)
posted by zenzenobia at 12:05 PM on August 25, 2022 [2 favorites]
The Murdochs have some familiarity with the hyperbole doctrine, considering that Fox News rode it to a court victory in 2020. Former Playboy model Karen McDougal sued Fox News over commentary by Tucker Carlson accusing her of committing “extortion” against Donald Trump. She’d done no such thing, but the federal judge in the case tossed the complaint: “Accusations of ‘extortion,’ ‘blackmail,’ and related crimes, such as the statements Mr. Carlson made here, are often construed as merely rhetorical hyperbole when they are not accompanied by additional specifics of the actions purportedly constituting the crime,” wrote U.S. District Judge Mary Kay Vyskocil.
(That’s a gift link so I hope it won’t run anyone into a paywall.)
posted by zenzenobia at 12:05 PM on August 25, 2022 [2 favorites]
I'm certainly not an expert but, according to the inestimable Dave 'Milbo' Milner (source of the stickers, and about whom I have a half-constructed FPP in a text file somewhere...), in the US the defendants would have a "you're a public figure, so we can chat shit about you" defence. Otherwise little Murdoch would've been suing all sorts of media outlets more-or-less constantly since the coup attempt so, well, Fuck Lachlan Murdoch.
posted by pompomtom at 1:53 AM on August 26, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by pompomtom at 1:53 AM on August 26, 2022 [2 favorites]
I've been supporting CRIKEY for a while, and despise what the Murdoch propaganda machine has done to Australian and USA democracy, so I'm hoping for the best here...
posted by zog at 7:03 PM on August 27, 2022 [2 favorites]
posted by zog at 7:03 PM on August 27, 2022 [2 favorites]
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