The ABC journalist Mark Willacy told a confidential source that “Murdoch’s people are tabloid bottom feeders” after the Daily Telegraph asked questions about his reporting, the federal court has heard.
The award-winning journalist’s email exchange with the US marine source, known by the pseudonym Josh in his news reports, was revealed under cross-examination on day three of a defamation trial brought by the former commando Heston Russell.
Russell is suing the ABC over two online news articles, a television news item and a radio broadcast published in 2020 and 2021 about the alleged actions in Afghanistan in 2012 of the November platoon, which Russell commanded.
Willacy agreed that the ABC’s director of communications, Nick Leys, spoke to him in October 2020 about an inquiry from the Daily Telegraph’s chief entertainment reporter, Jonathon Moran.
Moran sent a series of questions to the ABC that asked for a response to a claim by Russell that the incident Willacy’s story described “did not occur”.
The ABC reported that Josh said Australian special forces shot and killed a bound Afghan prisoner after being told he would not fit on the US aircraft coming to pick them up.
Willacy told Russell’s barrister, Sue Chrysanthou SC, that he wrote responses to Moran’s questions and sent them to Leys.
Willacy agreed he had told Josh in the email to let him know “if you hear from any Aussie journos”.
Chrysanthou read out part of Willacy’s email to Josh: “But as suggested I just say I stand by my account, read the ABC story, and I won’t answer any questions. Murdoch’s people are tabloid bottom feeders. Anyway, I’ll be in touch again about the book. It’s a bit of a slog. Take care mate.”
Moran published a story on 28 October 2020 that began: “The platoon commander of an Australian special forces unit accused in an ABC report of murdering an Afghan prisoner because there weren’t enough seats on a helicopter has vowed it never happened.”
The court heard the ABC published Moran’s questions and the corporation’s responses on its website. Earlier, the court was told another confidential source used by Willacy had been described as a wanker and a show pony.
Chrysanthou asked the investigative journalist why he relied on the source who had been described by someone he trusted in such unflattering terms.
Willacy agreed with Justice Michael Lee when he asked him if he treated his interactions with such a person “more cautiously” in the light of this character assessment.
Lee: “If someone you trust says another person is a wanker and a show pony then you generally treat your interactions with that person, somewhat more cautiously than otherwise will be the case?”
Willacy: “That’s correct.”
Chrysanthou suggested Willacy had no interest in writing positive stories about the people he investigated because he failed to write down the positive things said to him about a person.
Willacy countered that his brief is to report on war crimes and other parts of the ABC did the positive stories.
Russell’s legal team has access to many of Willacy’s notebooks, computer files, emails and texts that relate to the stories being sued on. Private communications between Willacy and his editors at the ABC have been scrutinised in court.
The federal court found in a preliminary hearing in February that Russell was defamed by the ABC in a series of articles that linked him to war crimes and alleged he left “fire and bodies” in his wake during his service in Afghanistan.
Lee found the ABC defamed Russell by conveying that he was “the subject of an active criminal investigation into his conduct as a commando in Afghanistan” and “reasonably suspected … of committing a crime or crimes when he was a commando in Afghanistan”.
The ABC dropped its truth defence in May and is relying on the new public interest defence, which was introduced in most states and the ACT in July 2021, and has yet to be tested in the context of a full trial.
The ABC is seeking to prove the articles and broadcast concerned “an issue of public interest” and they “reasonably believed that the publication of the matter was in the public interest”.
The hearing continues.
