site Crikey of using legal threats to attract subscriptions
Crikey used a legal threat from Lachlan Murdoch to drive subscriptions, a statement of claim from the co-chairman of News Corporation alleges.
Murdoch has launched proceedings for defamation against the independent news site over an article published in June that named the Murdoch family as an “unindicted co-conspirator” in the 6 January Capitol riots.
Murdoch is seeking aggravated damages and an injunction to prevent Crikey from republishing the article and its imputations.
Lawyers for Murdoch say the article falsely alleged, among other imputations, that Murdoch “illegally conspired with Trump to overturn the presidential election result” and “knowingly entered into a criminal conspiracy with Donald Trump and a large number of Fox News commentators to overturn the 2020 election result”.
The lawsuit was filed in Australia’s federal court late on Tuesday, a day after Crikey bought a full-page ad in the New York Times inviting Murdoch to sue them over the alleged defamation.
The statement of claim alleges that the placement of the NYT advertisement was “seeking to humiliate” Murdoch, the executive chairman, and chief executive of Fox Corporation.
Murdoch began proceedings to sue Crikey after the website republished the article on 15 August, after initially taking it offline when the editor received concerns notice on 30 June.
This week Crikey published all the legal correspondence between lawyers for both parties which details why Crikey refused to remove the article and apologize, and what offers to settle have been made.
The 40-page writ alleges that someone from Private Media contacted the SMH “seeking to publicize that Murdoch had complained about its content” and an article was published in the Nine mastheads on 14 August which made public the legal threat.
“Private Media has continued to use the SMH article and their (false) allegations about Murdoch intimidating them, to promote the article and the Crikey website in order to increase its number of subscribers for financial gain,” the writ alleges.
Murdoch is seeking damages because through the publication and republication of the article “Murdoch has been gravely injured in his character, his personal reputation and his professional reputation as a business person and company director, and has suffered and will continue to suffer substantial hurt, distress, and embarrassment.”
Murdoch through his lawyers has accused Private Media of: “Falsely suggesting that Murdoch was being unreasonable in his conduct towards them to settle the dispute, in circumstances where he repeatedly told them that an apology was the only further step that needed to occur for the matter to resolve.”
In the document, barrister Sue Chrysanthou SC and solicitor John Churchill allege Private Media has a “disingenuous scheme, contrived on or about 25 July to improperly use the offer to make amends to conduct a campaign of self-promotion”.