Rupert Murdoch’s son is suing an Australian website for defamation in a Sydney court over an opinion piece about last year’s Jan 6 Jan insurrection in the US Capitol building.
Fox Corp chief executive Lachlan Murdoch accused Crikey of defamation after the website, he said, accused him of being complicit in the riots last year.
Meanwhile, Crikey publisher Private Media on Wednesday “welcomed” Federal Court proceedings filed this week by Mr Murdoch.
Mr Murdoch’s lawyers claim Crikey published an article in June this year that implied he “illegally conspired with Donald Trump to incite an armed mob to march on the Capitol to physically prevent confirmation of the outcome of the 2020 presidential election”.
In the article that ran on 29 June, lawyers claimed it described Mr Murdoch as an “unindicted co-conspirator” in the effort by Trump supporters to overturn his 2020 election loss to president Joe Biden, stated the lawsuit.
“Murdoch has been gravely injured in his character, his personal reputation, and his professional reputation,” the lawsuit added.
Crikey’s editor Peter Fray, and Eric Beecher, the chairman of its publisher Private Media, said, “we are determined to fight for the integrity and importance of diverse independent media in Australian democracy”.
This week, Crikey’s Murdoch letters series revealed how media power works in the country. Private Media chief Will Hayward said: “We welcome Lachlan Murdoch’s writ. We believe that coverage of the events of 6 January at the US Capitol, and the role of Fox News in those events, is absolutely legitimate.”
Sydney Morning Herald quoted Mr Hayward as saying that “the best way to support our case is to subscribe to Crikey”.
He posted a series of tweets with a link to subscribe and said: “Here in Australia, if we lose the case in court, the cost to Crikey could be millions in damages and legal costs.”
Crikey’s original article was removed from the website along with a Facebook post and tweet when Mr Murdoch’s lawyer John Churchill wrote to the news outlet in June. Local media reported it was republished last week, triggering moves to file proceedings.
