Fox Corp CEO and executive chairman Lachlan Murdoch – already busy fighting two multi-billion dollar defamation lawsuits aimed at Fox News in the US – has asked a news organization in his family’s home country of Australia, with legal action. has threatened.
The threat stems from comments that accuse the network of being responsible for the rhetoric that hit the U.S. on January 6, 2021. Helped fuel the Siege of the Capitol.
Now Australian political news site Crikey has a message: turn it on.
“Lachlan Murdoch appears desperate to distance himself from Fox’s actions in fueling the January 6 uprising,” Cricki’s editor-in-chief, Peter Frey, told NPR from Sydney. “And he is taking quite extraordinary steps to shut down public debate in this country.”
Frey says that his news site was not literally saying that Murdoch personally incited people to violence that day. But, says Frye, “the buck has to stop somewhere.”
Therefore, in full-page advertisements appearing today in The New York Times and Canberra Times in the Australian capital city, Eric Beecher, chairman of Frey and Crickie’s parent company, Private Media, announced that he welcomed Murdoch’s threat of a lawsuit. .
In the written text of their ad, the two suggested that they wanted it to serve as a test of Australian defamation laws, which, they wrote, are “too restrictive.”
Fox Corp. declined to comment on the dispute with Crick yesterday.
Murdoch’s complaints arose from a June 29 piece inspired by revelations about the activities of former President Donald Trump and his aides prior to an uprising in the US Congress last year.
Crick’s political editor said Fox was among Trump’s top aides, and ended a column calling Murdoch and his father Rupert “innocent co-conspirators” in the siege because of the incendiary rhetoric that often circulated.
Beecher and Frey wrote, “At Cricci we strongly support the freedom of opinion and public interest journalism.”
The two men said they have decided to ask Murdoch’s lawyers to publish all legal demands and allegations against Crickey and the site’s responses, “so that people can judge your allegations for themselves.”
Fox News in the US I have to face a couple of defamation.
The flap occurs at the very moment Fox News is publicly invoking free speech ideals as it does in the U.S.
In response to those two lawsuits, Fox News said, “Freedom of the press is the foundation of our democracy and must be protected.”
And the network called the damages sought – more than $4 billion combined – “nothing more than a major effort to stop our journalists from doing their jobs.”
A day after Cricki political editor Bernard Keane’s June 29 column alleging a link between Fox’s broadcast and Trump’s actions, Lachlan Murdoch’s Australian media attorney, John Churchill, threatened a defamation suit and an apology. Sent a note demanding demand.
Churchill argued that Crickey had made an “unwarranted attack” in personally linking Murdoch to the January 6 attacks that “malicious and amplify harm.”
Crick took the post down saying it was doing so as a courtesy. But no apologies were being received, and earlier this month, Cricki reposted Keane’s column.
Its executives told the Sydney Morning Herald that the episode was one of several moments in which Murdoch tried to bully the news site.
Australia remains important to Murdoch
Australia plays a recurring and central role in many of the Murdoch family dramas, both personally and professionally.
Lachlan’s father, Rupert Murdoch, was born there and founded his estate in Adelaide with a small newspaper given to him by his father. Nearly two decades ago, Lachlan moved to Australia to make his mark when he left his father’s Manhattan-based media empire over corporate infighting. Lachlan’s wife is Australian. He holds Australian citizenship and considers Australia home.
Although Lachlan has returned, and once again helps lead the family media empire, he moves back to Sydney during the pandemic with his wife and children. They still live there.
Australia plays a recurring and central role in many of the Murdoch family dramas, both personally and professionally.
Lachlan’s father, Rupert Murdoch, was born there and founded his estate in Adelaide with a small newspaper given to him by his father. Nearly two decades ago, Lachlan moved to Australia to make his mark when he left his father’s Manhattan-based media empire over corporate infighting. Lachlan’s wife is Australian. He holds Australian citizenship and considers Australia home.
Although Lachlan has returned, and once again helps lead the family media empire, he moves back to Sydney during the pandemic with his wife and children. They still live there.