In this week’s edition of Media Briefs, your correspondent experiences a day of defamation trials on Sydney’s Phillip St, Lachlan Murdoch meets with Volodymyr Zelenskyy, and the ABC moves to get hip with the kids.
A day of defamation in Sydney
November 22 was a big day for defamation trials in Sydney’s vaunted Phillip St legal district, with the assorted legal teams of disgraced soldier Ben Roberts-Smith and former Liberal staffer Bruce Lehrmann all packing into Queens Square in the morning.
Television cameras crowded the courts’ entry, as they tend to do during high-profile trials, keenly awaiting both Network 10’s Lisa Wilkinson and Lehrmann’s arrival. While your correspondent considered himself sharply dressed that morning (and received compliments to that effect from court staff), the attention of the cameras was on a visibly upbeat Wilkinson, flanked by eminent defamation barrister Sue Chrysanthou SC.
Lehrmann’s defamation suit is against Wilkinson and Network 10, which aired an interview with Lehrmann’s former colleague Brittany Higgins in February 2021 including the allegation that she was raped in Parliament House in 2019. The suit was scheduled to be held alongside proceedings against the ABC, which broadcast an address by Higgins to the National Press Club in February 2022.
Lawyers for the national broadcaster told Justice Michael Lee that they were “pleased to be able to tell (the court) the matter has settled and the parties have executed a deed of settlement”, at the beginning of the morning’s proceedings.
The ABC, in a statement, said: “The proceedings have settled on mutually acceptable, confidential terms, without admission of liability”.
The trial involving Network 10 continued, with Matthew Richardson SC appearing for Lehrmann to give opening statements. Courtroom 22A was packed out, with “standing room only” a disservice to the interest from the gallery. There was, notably, only one seat left empty as the trial began — next to Bruce Lehrmann himself in the front row.
In concluding his opening remarks, Richardson said Lehrmann had “lost everything” as a result of the allegations.
“My client has been publicly maligned as certainly the most prominent rapist, probably one of the more revolting predators of the recent history of this country,” Richardson said.
“We say the publication that seared this allegation of rape into the national consciousness was the TV interview between the complainant and Ms Wilkinson on The Project, carefully edited to emphasise the emotion of the complainant, the ostentatious outrage of Ms Wilkinson, the visceral denunciation of my client as the most odious of predators, accompanied, as your Honour will have heard, by sinister sound effects, as in a horror movie, interluded with melancholy piano sounds as well. Mr Lehrmann has lost everything.”
Lehrmann’s former colleague Karly Abbott, staffer to former Defence industry minister Steven Ciobo, was called as the first witness of the afternoon.
Abbott spoke to the nature of the conversations within Parliament House circles prior to and following the publication of the Network 10 story, telling the court that she understood in October 2019 that an incident had occurred involving Higgins and that there may be an imminent media story pertaining to an incident earlier that year between Higgins and Lehrmann.
Asked whether Higgins had had a conversation with her about having been allegedly sexually assaulted in Parliament House, and whether she suggested that Higgins would ensure the “story never gets out”, Abbott unequivocally said, “Absolutely not”.
Later Lehrmann himself was called as a witness. He told the court he had “become severely isolated” and been kicked out of group chats as friends removed him from social media.
Lehrmann then went on to recount the night referred to in the Network 10 reports, taking questions with regard to his relationship with Brittany Higgins and the nature of their social activity that night across Canberra.
The Lehrmann trial is set to continue on November 23, with lawyers for Network 10 seeking to include evidence of a report penned by an expert lip-reader.
In another court nearby, lawyers for interests associated with the Seven Network and Kerry Stokes were arguing an appeal over the validity of a subpoena seeking details of their communications with the Ben Roberts-Smith camp in the context of Nine Network’s application that the Seven/Stokes interests pay Nine’s costs of the trial which resulted in the former soldier’s loss to Nine in his defamation suit over a series of 2018 publications he alleges falsely made him out as a war criminal. Nine says that the Seven/Stokes interests were so intimately involved in the direction of the matter that they should pay the massive costs incurred by Nine in circumstances where Roberts-Smith appears unable to pay them himself.
Justice Anthony Besanko found earlier this year that the allegations made by the newspapers were made out to a civil standard and that on the balance of probabilities, Roberts-Smith was complicit in the murder of four unarmed Afghan prisoners, including kicking a handcuffed man off a cliff before ordering him shot dead.
It comes as Stan, owned by Nine, began promoting an upcoming documentary on the saga: Revealed: Ben Roberts-Smith On Trial. The documentary will go to air on December 10, following journalists Nick McKenzie and Chris Masters as they uncovered Roberts-Smith’s alleged war crimes.
ABC TikToks
The ABC’s moves to consolidate its digital position in an age of declining broadcast audiences have taken unusual steps, with the national broadcaster now advertising for four video presenter/producer positions in the digital content and innovation team. The jobs are on six-month contracts and pay between $93-114k per annum. The job description states that in order to be competitive, candidates must have: “over 10k followers/subscribers on TikTok, Instagram or YouTube”, or “created a vertical video with over 100k views or horizontal video with over 50k views” and a “demonstrated ability to shoot and edit video”.
The AFR’s Mark Di Stefano tweeted: “You’ve got to be kidding me”, while SBS journalist Monique Pueblos said it “gives (her) the ick. So many incredible and qualified gen Z journos and new grads who are strong storytellers but don’t have a following.”
The Age‘s story was headlined: “Aunty social: ABC to pay $100k for you to slay on TikTok”. Make of that what you will.
Australian TikTok creator Steph Briese, who managed social media for the Yes campaign, said it was a good thing for the ABC.
“We know that young people are increasingly getting their news in unconventional ways,” Briese told Media Briefs.
“We can see how well it’s going with the Guardian, with Matilda [Boseley], they’re killing it there.”
Briese saw no issue with the ABC engaging in “established influencer marketing” by requiring certain follower counts from candidates.
“I don’t think there’s anything wrong with chasing established audiences. Places like TikTok let you see narratives that you don’t traditionally hear — I think young people are more interested in those diverse stories.”
Lachlan Murdoch meets with Ukraine’s president
Lachlan Murdoch and Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy are unlikely bedfellows, but that’s exactly what transpired this week.
The new News Corp chair, having recently replaced his retiring father Rupert, travelled to Kyiv as what Zelenskyy described as a “very important signal” of support at a time when the world’s attention is focused away from the Russia-Ukraine conflict and on the Middle East.
Fox News’ Benjamin Hall, and The Sun’s Jerome Starkey, were also invited. Hall, who lost a leg, a foot and an eye in 2022 while reporting on the conflict, was awarded the Ukrainian Order of Merit by Zelensky at the meeting.
Moves
- Nine News Melbourne has made a shift to its presenting lineup, with veteran anchor Peter Hitchener to move to weekends. Alicia Loxley and Tom Steinfort take the reins as the new hosts.
Tweet of the week
Communications Minister Michelle Rowland fronted the National Press Club this week and made light of the competing interests in Australian media. The two questions to Rowland on a proposal to make the streaming apps of free-to-air providers more prominent on Australian smart TVs (over subscription services) came from Sky News’ Tom Connell and Nine’s Reece D’Alessandro.
The Guardian‘s Josh Taylor tweeted: “It was funny to me that the two questions to the (communications) minister on this yesterday came from a subscription TV reporter and a free to air reporter.”
