Media mogul Lachlan Murdoch has launched defamation proceedings against the Australian parent company of publication Crikey for its coverage of the January 6 insurrection in the US.
Murdoch‘s lawyers filed the lawsuit against Private Media on Tuesday afternoon over an analysis article written in June by political editor Bernard Keane. It named the Murdoch family and its “slew of poisonous Fox News commentators” as “unindicted co-conspirators” in the riots at Washington’s Capitol.
The lawsuit was filed one day after Crikey took out a full-page ad in the New York Times challenging Murdoch, who is also the CEO of Fox Corporation, to sue them.
Turns out News Corp and Murdoch’s lawyers had already been sending legal letters, which Crikey also decided to publish this week.
In the letters the lawyers asserted the Crikey article made “scandalous allegations of criminal conduct and conspiracy” which were “defamatory”.
Private Media chairman Erich Beecher wrote in response on Tuesday he was confident the suit would “fail”. He said because Mr Keane’s article did not name Lachlan Murdoch and the word “Murdoch” only appeared twice in the piece, it did not carry the implications Murdoch’s lawyers claimed.
He said “any such imputation relies on a thoroughly strained and contorted interpretation of the words of the article”.
Crikey’s editor Peter Fray also said on Tuesday night the publisher wanted this to go to court.
“We invited Lachlan Murdoch to sue us and now he has. And we say bring it on,” he said.
On Wednesday morning Fray and Beecher published another statement on behalf of Crikey which “welcomed Lachlan Murdoch’s writ”.
“Crikey stands by its story and we look forward to defending our independent public interest journalism in court against the considerable resources of Lachlan Murdoch,” he wrote.
“We believe that coverage of the events of January 6 at the US Capitol, and the role of Fox News in those events, is absolutely legitimate.
“We are determined to fight for the integrity and importance of diverse independent media in Australian democracy.”
