SYDNEY: Media mogul Lachlan Murdoch has dropped his defamation case against independent Australian publisher Crikey which linked his family to the January 6 United States Capitol attack.
Murdoch’s lawyers on Friday said continuing the lawsuit would have only benefited the news site.
The CEO of Crikey hailed the news as a “victory for free speech”.
It comes just days after Fox News paid a large settlement to Dominion – a firm that deals in voting hardware and software – over false claims that the 2020 US presidential election was stolen from Donald Trump. The right-wing network made a last-minute $787.5m (£634m) payout to the machine company to end a two-year trial that publicly shredded the former’s credibility.
The Fox Corporation boss launched defamation proceedings against Crikey in August last year over an opinion piece published in June that named his family as an “unindicted co-conspirator” in the US Capitol attack and accused the media mogul of illegally conspiring with Trump to incite a “murderous” mob to march into Washington DC on January 6, 2021.
Murdoch had termed the article’s claims as “false” and “scandalous” allegations.
In a statement, Murdoch’s lawyer John Churchill said his client was confident that the outcome of the trial – scheduled for October – would have been in his favour.
“However he does not wish to further enable Crikey’s use of the court to litigate a case from another jurisdiction that has already been settled and facilitate a marketing campaign designed to attract subscribers and boost their profits,” Churchill said.
The small publisher – which was launched in 2000 and employs 10 full-time journalists – was planning to argue its article was contextually true, and in the public interest.
In court documents outlining its defence, Crikey argued Murdoch was ethically and morally culpable for the Capitol riot because Fox News, under his management and control, knowingly promoted false claims the election was stolen.
In a statement on Friday, Crikey’s publisher Private Media said Fox News’s settlement with Dominion earlier this week proved their case, adding it had won against the media billionaire.
But in his statement, Murdoch’s lawyer said the Dominion case did not have any connection to capitol attack, and that the trial judge had ruled it “irrelevant”.
Crikey’s legal team says it plans to ask the court to order that Murdoch cover the outlet’s legal costs.
