(Image: Private Media)
(Image: Private Media)

This article is part of a series about a legal threat sent to Crikey by Lachlan Murdoch, over an article Crikey published about the January 6 riots in the US. For the full series go here.

Crikey has decided to lift the veil and reveal how abuse of media power in Australia really works. 

Today we’re publishing a series of lengthy legal demands sent to us over the past two months by Lachlan Murdoch, the billionaire chairman of News Corp and Fox Corporation, as well as our lawyers’ replies to those demands.

Murdoch’s lawyer believes an article in late June by Crikey’s politics editor Bernard Keane was an “unwarranted attack on my client, without any notice and in complete disregard to the facts” and “is malicious and aggravates the harm to my client”.

The article in question was commentary about Donald Trump’s involvement in the January 6 insurrection attempt at the US Capitol. The article briefly refers to the role of Fox News in these events, and doesn’t mention Lachlan Murdoch by name. 

The headline — “Trump is a confirmed unhinged traitor. And Murdoch is his unindicted co-conspirator” — clearly refers to Rupert Murdoch, the only “Murdoch” used as shorthand by the media and the rest of the world.

The only other reference to the Murdoch family in the entire story is in the final paragraph: “The Murdochs and their slew of poisonous Fox News commentators are the unindicted co-conspirators of this continuing crisis.” The rest of the article is about Trump’s role on January 6 and the state of US politics.

Based on that headline and one sentence, Lachlan Murdoch’s lawyer began sending us long legal letters of demand, threatening litigation and accusing Crikey of making outrageous suggestions that his client “illegally conspired with Donald Trump to overturn the 2020 presidential election”, “illegally conspired with Donald Trump to incite a mob with murderous intent to march on the Capitol”, “knowingly entered into a criminal conspiracy with Donald Trump to overturn the 2020 presidential election result”, and “engaged in treachery and violent intent together with Donald Trump to overturn the 2020 presidential election result” — among 14 alleged defamatory imputations in total.

Absent any feelings about the Murdochs, their ethics or their role in the media, think about this:

  • A small Australian news website publishes an opinion piece about the Trump presidency and the US Select Committee investigation into the January 6 riot, briefly (and critically) including the key role of Fox News.
  • The article is not dissimilar to thousands of stories published in the US media about the complicity of Fox News in the Trump presidency and January 6 riots — many of those stories far more accusatory than ours. Indeed, Lachlan Murdoch described the role of Fox News after the 2020 presidential election as “the loyal opposition … that’s what our job is now with the Biden administration”. 
  • The Murdochs haven’t taken legal action in the US (where Fox News operates) because they are public figures and can’t successfully sue for defamation over a matter of public interest under US law, where the constitution protects freedom of the media.
  • Instead, the head of Fox News attempts to use Australian defamation law against a small Australian publication — Crikey — including a claim that “persons have approached members of Mr Murdoch’s family, staff and his friends about the allegations in the article, Crikey tweet and Crikey Facebook post that he is an unindicted co-conspirator with Donald Trump, and have specifically queried whether he was the subject of evidence before the House Select Committee”.

We are publishing these letters because we believe they expose the normally concealed world of Australian media power, in its most bullying form. 

Lachlan Murdoch and his father run two of the Western world’s biggest and most powerful media organisations, with a combined market capitalisation in the tens of billions. Our company, Private Media, is valued at less than $20 million.

Murdoch, his father and their companies are strong public advocates of media freedom. Their string of newspapers, websites and TV networks expose hypocrisy and publish controversial (sometimes incendiary) opinions on an almost daily basis. In Australia, News Corp is the biggest player in commercial journalism and is regularly attacked for its market dominance. 

We know it’s unusual to publish correspondence of this type, but confidentiality can’t be imposed unilaterally by a lawyer, only by a court or government.

Besides, we’re just following Rupert Murdoch’s own playbook. In the 1950s, as the fledgling owner of the small Adelaide tabloid The News, he responded to a threat from his large competitor, the Advertiser, to drive him out of business if he didn’t sell out to them, by printing their threatening letter on the front page.

Like the Murdochs, we believe in the public’s right to know. Exposing this legal assault is the only way we believe we can shine light on the actions of a powerful media owner (and therefore a competitor of ours) to silence a small publisher by resorting to Australia’s defamation laws — laws that News Corp itself constantly argues should give the media more freedom to fulfil its mandated role.

At Private Media, we’re proud of our moral compass and our editorial mission. Sure, we’re small, but if publishers like us didn’t exist in Australia, the Murdochs would be even more powerful and politically influential.

Ironically, News Corp, Fox News and Crikey do the same thing — journalism. We may do it in different ways, but we share a desire to reveal truth and expose hypocrisy. As Lachlan Murdoch argued in a lecture to the Institute of Public Affairs a few months ago, “we should reject every effort, and there are many, to limit points of view, to obstruct a diversity of opinions, and to enforce a singular world view. Those efforts are fundamentally anti-Australian”.

We didn’t start this senseless altercation with Lachlan Murdoch. We may not be as big, rich, powerful or important as him, but we have one common interest: we’re a news company that believes in publishing, not suppressing, public interest journalism.

That’s why we’re looking forward to meeting Lachlan Murdoch in court, as he has foreshadowed, to test the defamation laws he and his editors constantly complain about. And to hear him express his views to a judge about the purpose of journalism, as he articulated so cogently in his 2014 Keith Murdoch Oration at the State Library of Victoria:

Censorship should be resisted in all its insidious forms.

We should be vigilant of the gradual erosion of our freedom to know, to be informed and make reasoned decisions in our society and in our democracy.

We must all take notice and, like Sir Keith, have the courage to act when those freedoms are threatened.

Has Crikey done the right thing by publishing these letters? Let us know by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.