Dr Lisa Pryor’s defamation suit against Mark Latham and Fairfax has been “settled to my satisfaction at a mediation,” the writer and doctor announced on Twitter this morning, bringing an end to the year-long legal dispute.
Today, which incidentally is International Women’s Day, the Fin apologised for Latham’s column on page 2 …
Latham had used his AFR column of November 2014 to attack an article Pryor had written in Good Weekend a few days earlier about her use of caffeine and anti-depressants to get through studying medicine full time while raising two small children. Pryor’s column stated the reason for her admission was to “makes others feel safe to do the same”. “I’d like to hope this helps build the kinds of connections that protect against psychological trouble in the first place.”
Then-AFR columnist Latham seized on Pryor’s admission as an example of all that was wrong with modern feminists. The former Labor leader wrote:
“Why do people like this have children in the first place? How will the children feel when they grow up and learn that they pushed their mother onto anti-depressants? … Inner-city feminists, more often than not, they don’t like children and don’t want to be with them. They use political feminism as a release valve, trying to free themselves from nature’s way”.
Pryor sued her own publisher and former employer for defamation, garnering the public support of several other Fairfax columnists and writers, but AFR editor-in-chief Michael Stutchbury stood firm behind his own columnist.
A petition was started by Fairfax columnist (and journalism academic) Jenna Price calling on Stutchbury to “force Latham to apologise” and remove his column from the website (Latham’s article wasn’t online this morning). Pryor, who contended the article defamed her by implying she didn’t love her children, sought an apology from the paper, but Stutchbury told her he had no plans to apologise.
When Latham eventually quit after being linked to a Twitter account that had been sending abusive tweets to then-Australian of the Year Rosie Batty, an unbylined article in the Fin made reference to feminist criticisms of Latham, and paraphrased Stutchbury’s thoughts on the issue:
“Some feminist websites and activists have campaigned against Mr Latham’s columns, including by complaining to Westpac, which presents the successful Women of Influence awards with the Financial Review.
“Mr Stutchbury said he appreciated the nature of the complaints about Mr Latham’s columns and accepted there was always a line that responsible publications must not cross.
“But he defended the Financial Review‘s right and even duty to publish provocative opinions that some readers and non-readers might find offensive, as this was a hallmark of a vibrant democracy. The various controversies surrounding Mr Latham raised important issues about the robustness of public speech in a social media world, he said.”
A preliminary ruling in the case was issued in the NSW Supreme Court last May. The case was to go before a jury in April this year.
Both Pryor and Stutchbury declined to comment further this morning. But Price told Crikey Fairfax’s reluctance to issue an apology until now put her in mind of how Fairfax dragged its heels over taking action on the Paul Sheehan controversy last month (he was “stood down” from his column on Friday, after SMH editor-in-chief Darren Goodsir conducted a review).
“I think it’s really interesting when mainstream media tries to pretend that it can behave the way it used to behave, which means not to respond to the way readers are reacting,” Price said. “You saw this not just with Latham — though this took longer than I thought it would — and you also saw it with Paul Sheehan.”
As to whether writing like Latham’s contributes to a “vibrant democracy”, as Stutchbury was paraphrased saying in the Fin, Price said Australians were entitled to strongly worded arguments but only if they were based in evidence. “Neither Latham nor Sheehan’s [arguments] were based in evidence,” she said.
Commenting on the Pryor case, Price said she hoped the columnist got more than an apology out of Fairfax, “because she deserves it”. “And I wish Rosie Batty was suing too.” Latham has criticised Batty’s response to her son’s murder in a column.
My views of Michael Stutchbury are largely unprintable – let’s just say very politely that he is an appalling apologist for the excesses of the big end of town. But on this issue he had a very salient point. Love him or loathe him, without Latham the Fin Review is dull as dishwater. And love him or loathe him the fact that his very interesting piece encouraged Lisa Pryor to seek legal redress is absurd. Surely the correct response for a journalist in particular would have been to return fire!
As for Jenna Price – what a piece of work! This is a woman who makes her journalistic living by constantly seeking ways to silence anyone who doesn’t conform with her particular hateful far-left agenda. This is a woman who not so long ago informed (‘Wanted: leaders who promote social cohesion’, Canberra Times, 21 July 2015) her readers of an event 25 years ago in her house when someone who she hardly knew made a joke about Jews having ‘deep pockets’, she threw a complete hissy fit and threw him out of the house. Such is her own sense of righteous victimhood in EVERYTHING she’s sees – even if, as in this case, it is actually about someone else!
Seems to me that Pryor is a bad winner (I can’t speak to her abilities as a mother). Her comments about evidence are a little bizarre: her entire case was based on her feelings of hurt, and believing (with no evidence) that she was being unfairly criticised as a mother. (Mummy! Mark’s been naughty again)
What happened to freedom of speech? Seems that doesn’t apply to feminist non-issues.
Sincere apologies, Ms Pryor… I misread and attributed comments to you that were not yours.
That doesn’t let Jenna Price off the hook, though.
Good to see Crikey the comments are up to the mark on IWD.
#facepalm
Mark Latham claimed that ‘inner-city feminists’ (or at least most of them) don’t like their children, criticising them for taking antidepressants to cope with the stress of balancing work and child-rearing. I don’t agree with his view about feminist attitudes to children (maybe my sample size is too small), and it seems wholly unreasonable to suggest that anyone struggling with raising a child is someone who doesn’t like children – let’s face it, they can be difficult people to deal with. Yet I might share his concern with society’s excessive use of antidepressants, over-prescribed by GPs and psychiatrists, to help us cope with the normal pressures of modern life (and now they’re increasingly prescribing them – off-label, of course – for the kids too), and I feel that’s part of point he was making. Ho hum, turn the page and read on. But the howl of outrage that followed publication of Latham’s comments is another matter altogether and typical of a growing intolerance in public debate. How did this ever get to the Supreme Court under the guise of a defamation suit? Who has the time, inclination and money that this doctor (oh yes, the money) had to pursue every imagined slight against their reputation in the courts? Take your seat in the grandstand, Dr Pryor. When the columnist Jenna Price tells us that Australians are entitled to strong-worded arguments but only if they’re based in evidence, she’s unwittingly put almost all columnists and indeed most journalists, who rarely do more than quote the untested opinions of others, out of work, while deeply misunderstanding what free speech actually sounds like. Evidence is what each of us is prepared to grant as admissible, not some absolute test able to magically silence the objections of all but the demented. Usually we only accept what fits best with our prejudices. Price knows this in her heart but doesn’t want to face the consequences of living in a society that gives Mark Latham a soap box, preferring to use whatever methods are available to silence him and anyone she and her mates on Twitter don’t agree with. She can dress it up with slurs suggesting the mainstream media are ignoring ‘the readers’, but if it looks and sounds and smells like intolerance, then it probably is.